


Call Of Duty: High Noon

by artisticabandon



Series: Call Of Duty [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: (idiot with a gun is still an idiot), Canon-Typical Violence, Dick's still a cop in this, Gen, Implied/Referenced Terrorism - freeform, Injury, Original Character(s), Originally Posted on FanFiction.Net, POV First Person, Taxis, how not to catch a cab
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-06-28 15:09:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 34,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15709719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artisticabandon/pseuds/artisticabandon
Summary: A lunch-hour break is a time to relax and recharge, right? But this is Blüdhaven. Things never go to plan. Especially when a psychotic gunman is on the loose...





	1. Crowds

**Author's Note:**

> _Rating:_ PG for light swearing  & canon-typical action/violence.  
>  _Timeline:_ Dick is still an officer with the BPD. Just after no longer being a rookie.  
>  _Category:_ Action all the way, with a bit of everything at the end. 1st-person (Dick's) POV mostly, but also a bit of everything later.  
>  _Syntax:_ Sentences in italics are thoughts, and in speech it's emphasis. Underline and bold are also used for emphasis and extra emphasis respectively. I try to use Americanisms where I can, but since I don't live there...please forgive me for writing with an accent. ;)  
>  _Feedback:_ What, like I'd say 'no' or something? Of course I want it. Action _really_ isn't my strong-suit.
> 
> As I said in the tags, this was originally on ff.n and I found out to my dismay that it wasn't here. So over a few weeks/months I'm going to be posting the series over here as well.

  


Don't you just hate it when life never turns out the way you plan?

Case in point: I'd spent the night on the town as Nightwing, thinking it'd be a light night and I might actually get some decent sleep. Instead, I got to bed about one hour before dawn, and I still felt like I had sandpaper for eyelids when I woke up later that morning about nine-thirty. It was still _waay_ too early to be up, but I had the shift running from ten am till seven at night all week. Don't ask me how I got myself dressed and to work in one piece, let alone on time...but I  do know that everything just went downhill from there.

First there was "Inspector" Arnot coming over to grill me about something – don't ask me what it was, I tuned out everything from the "hello" to the usual "get to it, Grayson." _Then_ I had both Rohrbach and Gannon to deal with. Both of them shoved "proper police procedures," quote unquote, far enough down my throat to give me indigestion for a week. I'd apparently misfiled some paperwork yesterday, so both of them gave me theirs to do as well as me having to redo all the misfiled forms. And let's not get me started on the cases everyone delights in giving me. If I saw one more of the cases "no one else can solve" that's actually simpler than kindergarten stuff in the next six hours...I'm going to scream. Long, loud, in the station-house, and they could lock me up in a rubber room and throw away the key for all I cared. I just wanted _something_ I could actually sink my mental teeth into.

The day only seemed to get marginally better when Gannon took pity on me and told me to go for a late lunch. And I said it only _seemed_ to get better because I already knew I was being lulled into a false sense of security. Not that I'm complaining, but this _is_ Blüdhaven I'm talking about. This town wouldn't know an easy day if it got socked in the face with one.

And even though I knew _that_ little home truth better than most, I still allowed myself to relax a little as I walked down the street, my favourite Gotham Knights jacket slung over my uniform, "off-duty" for one glorious hour. I had an hour of no worrying about some corrupt cop or some forms I'd rather to avoid, let alone hiding exactly how much I know about police work from the  other side of the fence. For just one sweet hour, I got to be me, simple Dick Grayson, just another regular guy walking down the street for lunch. Well, a guy as regular as I can be, considering the theoretical conflict between upholding the law in the day and breaking it each night I did my Nightwing thing.

I was whistling softly to myself as I strolled down the sidewalk, one of those Romany tunes my Dad – my real one – taught me before he passed on. More and more of those tunes seemed to be coming back to me lately, and I certainly weren't gonna complain. A guy needs to be in touch with his past to figure out what do now and in the future. Or how did Alfred put it? Something like: "He who doesn't learn the lessons from the past is doomed to repeat them in his future"?

Yeah, whatever.

So, anyway, I was walking down the street towards my lunch destination, this neat little deli I'd found about two months back. This was shaping up as my third visit in all that time – and probably the twenty-second one attempted. The place is run by this Asian couple, Southern Chinese if I'm not mistaken, with the help of their daughter. She's the one who speaks like a native both English and Mandarin while running the cash register and acting as a go-between between America and her parents.

Today, I was planning on consuming their house special. It was a hot piece of chicken schnitzel crumbed with their special blend of breadcrumbs, cheeses, and spices, topped with a few slices of cheese just beginning to melt – at last count, there was three different types of cheese in there. Add to that a few rashers of bacon and another lot of cheeses, and then a few sauces of homemade and exotic blends. On top of that put the usual blend of salad-makings like lettuce, pineapple, tomato, red onion, something they called "beetroot", and even a bit of olives. Put all that between a special bread roll made with parmesan cheese and Italian herbs, and you had their house special. Even my stomach was satisfied with that as my main course and a swig of water on the side. That was no mean feat, considering that Alfred often told me that my stomach defined the theory of black holes – everything went in and it was never full – and of course everything Alfred said was gospel or something.

I made it to just two small blocks away from the deli before something happened that quite literally shot all my fine plans to hell.

_Why can't I just once have a normal lunch like everyone else?_

Now let me make one thing clear before I continue. I have never been able to figure out why most people say a gunshot sounds like a bang. I've always thought it more reminiscent of an awfully loud crack, like a whip cracked right next to your ear at extremely high velocity...no matter how close (or far away) you are. The only difference is that the closer you are, the more whips involved.

Being in the middle of a crowd when you're really not expecting it just makes it worse. The fear that someone just got hurt hits you right between the eyes like a bullet all of its own and you're left shocked and stumbling mentally for a crucial split second. And then the screaming starts, whether people were hurt or not, and suddenly your own fear doesn't matter so much as everyone else's does. A scared crowd is one of the worst things someone could face in this world, especially when you're charged with protecting them.

Today was no exception. Whether I'm a vigilante or a police officer, one of my all-time nightmares has to be a psychotic gunman on a crowded street. There's just so much potential there for some innocent to be hurt, especially when the said gunman has no particular target in mind and just shoots without caring who or what they hit.

So of course I leapt into action...by starting to run while everyone else hit the dirt. I had already figured out that there was just one short block between me and the shooter, and I also knew that on the other side of the block was one of the busiest streets of Blüdhaven during lunch. _That ain't gonna be pretty._

Incidentally, I also knew that the gun wasn't exactly a common model. Hell, it wasn't even on the "domestic" market yet, and hopefully never would be. It was a weapon so advanced it came with its own ammo in nine round lots, usually with three clips in reserve. The clips were released and inserted at its base so that a professional could reload it in one second. All told, it had the firepower of a .357 Magnum available in a gun half the size and weight of a Colt .45. Some weapons specialist designed it about three months ago and started selling it on the black-market for half a mill a piece. Since the guy had come from Bristol, Connecticut, I'd personally nicknamed it the Bristol when Batman showed one to me.

Besides the question of where my shooter had come across the gun, the only curious part about it was that the shooter hadn't used the silencer that usually came with the piece. Our reputation aside, why the hell would you _want_ to call attention to yourself when the BPD headquarters was only a few blocks away?

Pushing the thought away for another time, I darted across the road and increased my pace to a brisk run, easily dodging around the people rushing away from the scene – and the voyeurs that were running towards it. The adrenaline was already pumping in my veins, tempered only slightly by the fact that it was the middle of the day and I wasn't in my "nightsuit".

I was still running across the block – why'd they have to make the stupid thing so big anyway? – when I heard the next shot, from the same gun as last time, immediately followed by someone's terrified scream. It was a girl by the sound of it, probably older than fifteen but certainly no younger than twenty – girls around that age bracket always have a incredible set of lungs for screaming.

I immediately increased my pace to a loping run, the type of effortless run that looks lazy but really lets you _move_. But speeding up was the easy bit; slowing down when I finally reached the end of the block was a little harder, and I crashed into at least two people before I managed to grab hold of a light-pole and swing myself around the corner. By now I was hearing more screams and people crying, but more subdued like people didn't really want to be heard. Not that I blame them. If there was a gun in the vicinity with some whacko on the trigger-end, I wouldn't want to be heard either.

Finally I slowed down and came to a stop, hugging a nearby building as I took in the scene. I still hadn't thought to pull my own piece yet, and absolutely had no plans to do so until I saw the lay of the land. Besides, with what I was now seeing, using the power-end of my gun was always going to be a last resort.

The street was sheer chaos in motion. There was movement everywhere as everyone tried to get away, out of sight and out of danger. It was all one big moving mess, no real sign of forethought but rather just the full-on pandemonium of people that had suddenly found themselves where they didn't want to be, and either dropped to the ground or were racing in all directions towards anywhere else. Problem was that everyone seemed to have picked a different place to go to – especially the cars. The sound of squealing brakes and burning rubber covered the terrified cries of the populace. Man, I'd hate to be the one paying their insurance and repair bills right now.

Still, as far as I was concerned, it was better that the public were running away. Not only would it mean fewer innocents in the shooter's line of sight, but it also meant that the inevitable shock at what was happening would be held off for a few extra moments while they ran. Of course, the shock was going to hit and hit hard the moment the danger was past and the adrenaline stopped flowing, and I wanted them as far out of danger as I could before that happened. Besides, even if the gunman had a target, it was unlikely that he'd be able to spot them through the crowd. And even if he did, he'd be as hard-pressed to shoot them just like I'd be hard pressed to try and shoot him myself. But if he was some kind of psycho who didn't care who (or what) he hit... _Worry about that later, Grayson. You've got work to do!_

Right. So where was the shooter?

Right on cue, there was another shot...up the street and across the road, about one hundred metres away. Right from where that latest surge of people had come from, if I had to guess.

I turned and moved in that direction, careful to keep a few people or cars between me and the open area around where I now knew the gunman had to be. Not that I normally advocate using the public as a screen to hide behind, but I needed something to cover the fact that I was the only one here running _towards_ the shooter. If the gunman saw me coming, especially if he saw the uniform my jacket was never intended to hide, I'd be finding myself on a lead-lined, all expenses paid ticket to my own funeral.

Even with the BPD's rep being what it was, I'm yet to find a criminal with a gun who _really_ wants to see a guy on the Force. Even a crooked cop can be more trouble than they're worth...but that's another story.

Peeking through the forest of torsos and arms as I moved let me finally see the shooter. I couldn't see enough to pick out his identity this far away in these conditions, but I saw enough to identify him later. He was about Bruce's height, maybe slightly taller, with dark-blond hair, and was either well tanned or ethnic in origin. He was also wearing jeans, a white shirt, denim jacket, sneakers, and holding the Bristol in his right hand...pointing it at the sky above even as he was laughing about something. _Laughing...the idiot's laughing._ Laughing with that peculiar kind of note in his voice that the Joker had down pat. That note is something I've heard far too often in my nightmares to mistake it for anything else. _He's psychotic. Lovely._ Besides the laughter, the fact that he was  still standing there shooting with a BPD building so close was already saying volumes about his mental health anyway.

_Great. Psychotic on a power high on the wrong end of a gun. Just what I don't need._

I realised right away that I was going to have to get a lot closer and be lot less crowded before I could even consider taking him down. Of course, I'd much rather use my fists – or my feet – than my gun, but to do that I'd have to be within striking range...and I'd kinda prefer if he didn't have the gun when I did it.

And then it happened.

 _I knew it! Talk about a false sense of security._ Even as I watched, the idiot gunman pointed the gun almost right at me and pulled the trigger with another laugh.

_Damn. What is this, 'hit on Grayson' day?_


	2. Approach

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How _not_ to catch a cab.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All hail the Char, for being a great beta.

I heard the laugh clearly from where I was diving for the ground with almost everyone around me. The ground was definitely the safer place to be at the moment; no way was I going to literally stand out when the crazy idiot was this close to me, even if I was fairly sure he hadn't seen me...yet.

The street was still for a moment. Actually, it was still only because I was enjoying the sudden, short silence that comes immediately after a gunshot while everyone else was probably approaching shock. Of course, the screaming and movement started up again about one second later. At least no one around me seemed to be grasping bloody limbs or anything.

Hell, maybe I was lucky (for once) and the shot had gone over all our heads.

Careful not to overtly move my head, I peeked over the mass of bodies to see what was happening. The gunman was now facing away so that I was seeing his profile, still pointing his gun into the crowd. I still couldn't really hear anything from him, but I already knew he'd be laughing that crazy laugh again and I really didn't need to hear that anyway.

And then he fired again into the crowd, this time to my right, and started running...down the sidewalk, on the other side of the street, but still in my direction. Which of course sent everyone else running again. Struggling to hold my place on the sidewalk, I glanced around quickly, hunting for some reason (other than me) for him to be heading my way.

I realized why right away when I saw the taxi rink about fifty meters away from him; he had probably spotted the sign advertising it and thought he'd spotted a quick-getaway opportunity. Problem was that he didn't yet know I was also near the taxi-rink, and he also didn't know what I was capable of.

Guess I'd just have to enlighten him the hard way.

Seeing the taxi-rink also gave me a few ideas as well. A few meters on my left, on the sidewalk, was a bus stop, where the Blüdhaven City Council had been so kind to provide a bench for their citizens to sit on while they waited for a bus on the off-chance it was actually on schedule. Of course, I wasn't interested in the bench so much as I was looking at the shelter itself, constructed around the bench to shield people from the weather...and in particular the heavily opaque perspex sides that were commonly used to put up advertising posters. There's no way, even with Blüdhaven's crime rate, that the perspex was going to be bullet-proof – no way the City Council was that generous – but it would still be a useful cover to hide behind. I hoped.

Not that I normally advocate cowering behind something. Not only does it massively go against my grain, but it would also be adding to BPD's rep as a bunch of useless cowardly criminals, and that wasn't exactly a label I wanted applied to Yours Truly. But it was either wait behind the shelter or reveal myself a lot earlier than would probably be healthy.

By the time I was behind the shelter, the gunman had covered about ten meters, which meant of course that he was also fit...or that I was taking longer to think than I should've been. But it's always best to overestimate your opponents, so I think I'll go with the first option.

Of course, his progress was helped along by the fact that he was still waving the gun around and using it to make people move out of his way. Not that the public wasn't used to people running down the city streets with a gun in their hand – this is, after all, Blüdhaven we're talking about – but the manic glint in his eyes and the psychotic expression on his face was enough to get even the most hardened Blüdhaven citizen moving out of his path.

Now that he was running pretty much towards me and I could fully see his features, I finally realized why I'd immediately hated that stupid laugh of his. The gunman was known on the streets simply as Diablo, a _Latino_ thug who was also the occasional henchman of the Joker – which was probably why he had the laugh down pat. I didn't know if he had a history of psychotic episodes, but he was certainly lucid enough – and smart enough – not to appear in Batman's radar long enough to be caught. That is, until now, when he'd planted himself smack-bang in the middle of _my_ radar. What he was doing in _my_ city was beyond me, but he wouldn't be here for much longer if I had anything to say about it.

So I got behind the shelter and waited. And waited. And waited. The time it took him to cross the forty meters to get to the taxi rink had to be longest five seconds of my life. And that time-frame meant Diablo was fit, but not that fit. The world record for 100 m is just under nine-point-five seconds and he would've run it in about twelve and a half seconds, if I had my maths right.

By the time he got near to the rink, the number of taxis present had dwindled from ten to three – seven had either taken passengers and peeled out of here, or had seen him coming and took off without waiting for a passenger. The three that were left either hadn't seen him, or were just too stupid and foolish to realize their danger. I _really_ hoped it wasn't the latter.

Two of the taxis took off when the Latino was still about five meters away from the rink, finally realizing their danger and deciding that they'd be better off elsewhere. The lone taxi that remained kept on starting and immediately stalling, like the driver was also trying to get away but kept forgetting which pedal was which and thus kept flooring the brake. Either that or kangaroo juice had just been put in its fuel tank.

Even without being able to see the license plate of the taxi, I already knew who drove it. Old Willy Jacknife – and I'll swear on a Bible that that's his real name – was a legend in Blüdhaven. He's won the Blüdhaven's Worst Taxi Driver award for about ten years in row, and he's a serious contender for the national award too. Gets all nervous whenever he gets a passenger and what driving knowledge he possesses slips through his sweaty palms and goes right out the window. But driving a taxi is all Willy can do to earn a living, so those of us who end up in his taxi just endure the ride and leave him an extra big tip to keep him off the streets for a while.

Still, Willy's taxi was the only one there, so there's no prizes for guessing which one Diablo picked. That just showed he wasn't a Havenite, because otherwise he would've just kept walking – it probably would've been faster and cheaper, not to mention safer.

I pulled out from behind the perspex shelter as soon as the gunman had thrown himself into the car. Making sure to keep down, I moved out onto the road and between two cars parked by the sidewalk. Perfect cover for the moment while I waited to see what happened.

Lucky for me, Willy was still having trouble with his driving, and his shocking nerves obviously weren't helped by having a gun stuck in his face courtesy of ol' Diablo. The car crawled up the street, almost standing on its nose within twenty metres more times than I have digits to count. It was obvious Diablo wasn't happy with Willy's abilities, or his stammering English. I could see the gesturing from here. The two gunshots were a bit harder to pick out, but they were definitely there.

While I waited for the taxi, I took another look around and assessed my chances of crossing the street. I realized right away that the hard part wasn't going to be intercepting the taxi. I wasn't going to have to worry about getting hit when I crossed; the street was practically free of traffic, even if was lunch-hour. One of the BPD's roving patrols had probably radioed the situation in so that roadblocks could be set up to keep the public out. Besides, Willy wasn't driving very fast anyway. No sir, the trouble was going to be keeping Diablo oblivious enough to my presence that I wouldn't get shot on the way over. And then there was going to be getting into the car and disarming the idiot without me or the driver getting hurt by a bullet in an enclosed space...let alone protecting all the curious and perverted that were gathering to watch what happened next.

And all that would've been a walk in the park for Nightwing if it was midnight and this was just another criminal on the run. I'd swing onto the roof, smash a window, and grab poor Willy while shooting out another jumpline. Once he was safe, I'd come back for the taxi – having already placed a WingTrace on it – and use the Rooftop Express to follow the nutcase and take him down.

But it's not so easy for Officer Grayson on his lunch-break, especially with snipers probably starting to get themselves set up all around us on the rooftops. There was no way I could pull off my usual moves, even if I wasn't sure how long until the snipers would all be in place. There were simply too many people around who might see and not enough shadows to cover my moves.

_Right. Let's see what you can do, Grayson._ There was nothing for it. I'd just have to 'wing it (all puns aside) and hope I kept the profile as low as I could.

Said determination of course lasted about two seconds, just long enough for Willy to open the taxi door and fling himself out. Problem: he'd just got the taxi into the right gear and was doing about 30 kph. Other problem: one Diablo hanging out the taxi, yelling obscenities and leveling his Bristol at ol' Willy. The only good thing that happened next was that the car promptly stalled without its driver, throwing the gunman off-balance enough to make the shot go wild.

_Willy..._

_Stop it. No time. Move!_ There was no time for consideration, no time for thinking. I had to  move, before I lost my chance.

But first things first.

Even before Willy had hit the road, I was running back, back onto the sidewalk and grabbing the sleeve of the closest person to me. Some curious businessman, or a voyeur wanting a show. I couldn't care less. "Hey! Do you know first-aid?"

He looked at me askance. "Say what?"

I shook my head, mentally cursing the craziness of the moment. _I don't have time for this!_ "Do you know first aid?" I pressed, invoking a shadow of the Bat to get a response. " _Quickly!_ "

He nodded, hurriedly, finally understanding my intent. "Yes."

"Then go help the driver," I ordered in the same tone as before, and gave the man a helpful push in the right direction. Charges of police brutality be damned. _Someone_ had to make sure Willy was okay while I took care of the psycho in the taxi.

I didn't even hang around to see if the bystander did as I told him. I was off, back between the cars and crouching in yet another anxious wait. The taxi had yet to get to me. The new driver had had to clamber into the front-seat, restart the stalled engine, and put the thing in gear before he'd been able to get going – that was why I'd allowed myself the small delay of securing first-aid for Willy. That should also mean there'd be too much on Diablo's plate for him to notice me right away, especially if I stayed down until the door was level with me.

And then the bonnet of the taxi appeared in front of me.

_C'mon, c'mon. Any second now..._

Luck, it first seemed, was with me.

First off, ol' Diablo was busy trying to release the stuck park-brake. Despite his best efforts, the engine was revving like there'd be no tomorrow and not much of today either but the car was barely moving. And he'd also forgot to close the door Willy had escaped out of...the very same door I was aiming to use. It also told me that no matter how good a thug he was, he couldn't think logistically and thus would never be more than just another thug.

Finally, just when I though I could wait no longer, the open door appeared at the end of the gap between the two cars. I immediately launched myself out of my crouch, propelling myself forward with as much speed as I could muster through the three running steps between us. It was only those three steps between him and me, between the criminal and the law, between his escape and my salvation.

Three lousy steps.

Plenty of time, it turned out, for everything to go to hell.


	3. Showdown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _This_ is what happens when you mix a gunman, a cop, and a taxi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to post this Friday, as usual, but I could do with the cheering.
> 
> Beta credit to Char.

All it took was two steps to create problems, and three steps for the chaos to start.

The first one was what finally brought me to his attention – Diablo was known for brawn, not brains – and sent his head twisting towards me, no doubt as he saw the movement in his peripheral vision. His eyes went wide as he saw the uniform under my Gotham Knights jacket. In those eyes I saw the fear I've seen in hundreds of criminals eyes over the years: fear of me and the justice I represented, the accountability for their actions that was finally catching up with them. I also saw in those coal-brown eyes the fire of his madness, the fire that had taken away his sanity until this psychotic episode would end...the same fire that constantly burns in the Joker's yellow eyes.

The second step I made saw him pick up the Bristol from where it had been lying between his stomach and the steering wheel and swing it towards me. As he did, I was already reaching out with my hands, originally aiming for the doorframe but now I was diverting one hand for the gun. Diablo just managed to get the gun steady between us – an unusually fast draw, especially for a thug – when I was finally close enough to brush my outstretched fingers of my left hand against the cool, metal barrel of the Bristol.

The third and final step brought me up close by the taxi and right up into his face even as I was grabbing the metal barrel of the Bristol. I yanked back and up, hard with all my strength, even before my fingers had fully closed around the Bristol's barrel. I'd only be satisfied about the situation when I had the gun far away from his twitchy, psychotic fingers – and that was a moment that would never come fast enough for me.

But I realized almost immediately that my angle was slightly wrong, that I'd miscalculated someplace where I really shouldn't have. His finger slipped on the trigger, pulling it. I immediately felt the blaze of pain along the top of my left shoulder, like the sting of a small swarm of bees all descending on the one spot in my flesh, even as I _heard_ the bullet whistle past my head. I dismissed the pain and the wetness I could feel spreading over my shoulder, pushing all that and the deafness from being far too close to discharging gun as far away as I could. _Worry about it later, Grayson. Stop him!_

Somehow I'd kept my fingers on the barrel the entire time, and while it was hot under my flesh it was nowhere near enough to make me let go. I yanked again, harder than before as my desperation lent me the strength I'd lacked last time. It would be enough. It had to be.

It was. The sudden hard motion, combined with the Bristol's powerful recoil, pulled his finger away from the trigger and loosened his grip. I pulled the gun back towards me again, intending to take it completely away from him while my other hand finally managed to grab a firm hold on the doorframe of the taxi.

Just as well I did, too. Diablo fell back as he lost the gun, back inside the taxi and partially onto the park-brake. His weight dislodged whatever had caused it to stick, and all of a sudden it was down and releasing its hold on the car. The taxi immediately surged forwards, catching both of us unawares and sending us both off-balance.

I stumbled, badly, not having expected the abrupt change in the car's momentum and thus loosing my footing. My feet were suddenly no more use to me than two big blocks of cement that only get in the way and I was quickly heading my way to the ground. The only good thing about the whole deal was that I managed to keep my grip on the Bristol the entire way down, not that this was going to help me much on my trip to the pavement. It was only my years of acrobatic training that helped me turn the stumble and fall into something else that let me spring back up the moment my hands grazed the pavement. Once again I launched myself to my feet and back into motion, the only difference from before being the Bristol now securely grasped in my grazed, complaining hands.

I mentally cursed as soon as I was up, realizing right away what my stumble had cost me, not just in time but in space. I was now a couple of metres behind the taxi, and that was a gap that would only widen if something didn't happen quickly to stop it. I ran on anyway in the hope that I'd be provided with that something. It was a desperate move, my last card in play. My top speed at full-tilt running was around 23 kph – and the fastest man on record was only a few digits above that – but not even that would help me if Diablo put his foot to the floor...which was, of course, the only logical thing to do.

For that moment, I'd lost. He'd get away and I had no means to get him back. Although one option was shooting his tires, I had no intention of doing it. There's no way I'd be responsible for an accident if that caused the car to veer out of control – which it would. Diablo wasn't exactly known for his driving skills either.

He had won his freedom, even if it was accidentally, and I'd lost my chance to take him down. He was going to get away, to roar off into the proverbial sunset, and I'd never hear the end of it from my friends and family. For that moment, our duel, our battle of wits and skills, was over with me and my pride the only sore losers. The only consolation to be found, if there was one, was that Diablo was now without the Bristol. They way my luck was going though, I kinda doubted he'd have left any serial numbers on it for me to trace later.

Fortunately, I found my ray of hope barely a moment later. I found my 'something to happen' that I needed to turn it all around.

Instead of speeding up and getting away like self-preservation instincts and all the common sense in the world would've demanded, Diablo did the opposite. _He's slowing down!_ But why _—The door!_ He was leaning over to close the door! It was no doubt to stop me getting in the car again, but he didn't realize that in doing so he lessened the pressure on the accelerator. The idiot.

I immediately put on another dose of speed, upgrading my running to the loping, effortless running I'd used barely minutes earlier but that felt more like a couple of months. I'd just managed to reach the boot of the taxi as Diablo grabbed hold of the inner door-handle and started to pull it shut. Thinking quickly, knowing my angle of approach put me in his mirrors' blind spot, I forced myself to wait until I was at the rear passenger door and the driver's door was almost shut before I acted.

At the top of my run, my hand with the Bristol in it shot out and pushed the gun into the small gap that remained as Diablo tried to slam the door, preventing it from shutting fully and keeping my access to him open. His grip on the handle slipped a bit in his shock at my sudden reappearance, and that was all the encouragement I needed to let the half-a-million-dollar gun become a glorified-lever in my hands to force the door.

It opened. Slowly. Millimeters. Centimeters. I kept forcing it open, my instincts telling me only that I needed more, more space and more time. Inches. Half a foot. _Enough. Now!_

I moved in, taking a running leap and shoving my body inside the small gap I'd created. My feet found the bottom of the doorway first, the standard-issue shoes slipping a moment before I managed to find some grip, and then one hand followed onto the chassis. The other hand with Bristol followed immediately after, and by now I had absolutely no qualms about shoving the damn thing into Diablo's neck.

"Move over!" It was a command, an order.

One that Diablo ignored...by swinging the wheel to the right. Hard.

I could only hang on as most of my body swung out in the opposite direction, tightening my grip even as I felt my fingers sliding as the force of the turn pulled at my grip. All I could do was ride it out, grimly waiting for the inevitable correction in my inertia and hoping it came before I couldn't hold on any longer. The correction came, as it always would, but this time Diablo swung the wheel with it, throwing my centre of balance back towards the taxi. I felt the door slam into my back and hit the shoulder with the bullet graze but ignored both hits, concentrating on reinforcing my grip on the car and putting the Bristol back into his thick, muscular neck while the rest of my body played Catch-Up.

" _Move it,_ you imbecile!" I was beyond orders, beyond politeness, beyond such niceties. This time the voice held more than a hint of the Bat. _"Now."_

He made no reply – in fact, I realized suddenly that I hadn't heard a clear word off him yet – and even his features made none of the appropriate responses. There was no growing fear or desperation like you'd expect, just a manic glint in his eyes and growing smug smirk, like he knew everything I didn't. The response that did come, however, was one unexpected but not exactly unsurprising.

Again, he abruptly swung the wheel to the left, swerving the car even harder than before, but I was already moving with it, already prepared for anything and everything. His lack of response in the usual ways had alerted me that this was not your usual cowardly crim. This crazy idiot was firmly residing in the Land of the Psychotic, and none of the normal rules were going to apply to him and his way of thinking.

And that of course meant that my own responses were going have to be a lot more creative than I'd originally thought.

Instead of riding the turn like last time and almost losing my grip, I leaned _into_ the curve, pressing my body into the taxi as the forces in the turn tried to tug me out. It was an odd bit of logic – or illogical logic – that I'd gained from my youth: lean against the forces, not with them, and you won't lose ground. After all, when you're stuck in the backseat of a VW Beetle between two super-powered girls on one of the Titan's more unusual road trips, _especially_ when Roy was driving down a mountain road, you quickly learned how  not to lean over your backseat companions in a turn. It was either that or lose certain vital body parts when you accidentally leaned on the completely wrong area on a female's body.

The intervening years hadn't dulled the tactic that once again worked for me. Not only did I keep my place, but this time I managed to keep the Bristol pressed into his without one bit of relaxation in pressure throughout the entire turn. "Guess what, Dabie?" I taunted softly, venomously. "Time's up."

And _finally_ , I got a response. His faced paled until he looked like his face was covered in ashen dust as his eyes widened – either in surprise or fear, I wasn't certain, but I knew it was the first clear reaction I'd received yet beyond the erratic course he's chosen. Either way, Diablo was probably realizing about now that the hitchhiker he'd picked up wasn't the usual Blüdhaven cop variety, that I was actually anything _but_ normal. I smirked, glad to see that I was finally intimidating the thug...and then took another look at his eyes.

_Whoa. Deer in the headlights._ He wasn't staring at _me_ in a mixture of fear and surprise, and it wasn't  me that made him freeze behind the wheel and look like a rabbit trapped in a car's headlights. He was looking at something ahead of us...something the car was heading towards...something we were probably going to hit.

Taking a risk that this wasn't some skilled deception on his part to catch me unawares, I allowed myself to look at what had him so entranced, using only one eye just in case. What I saw, what we heading towards at a fast rate of knots, made my other eye and the rest of my head turn quickly towards the front to see the item just over eighty metres away and closing in _fast_.

_Oh boy._

At some point in Blüdhaven's history, its citizens had once been served by trams, cable-cars if you will. The trams were now long gone, having made way for the pollution-heavy vehicles of today...but the tramstops remained, abandoned reminders of what had once been. Just recently, the Blüdhaven City Council had decided to replace the old, rotted timber posts that designated a tramstop with a more modern and distinctive item. Being Blüdhaven of course, only a few tramstops had had the modifications made to them before the project organizers ran out of money and motivation. _Damn. Out of all the luck..._ And out of all Blüdhaven's many tramstops, we  had to be heading towards one of the five that had been modified.

We were now officially in serious trouble.

Had it just been one of the old posts that had rotted to the core after being battered by almost a century of Blüdhaven's pollution, we would have been fine. Old Willy Jacknife's taxi would certainly have been worse for wear, but it was definitely a survivable crash as long as we kept on our present course...for Diablo. Not me. I would've hit the post. While I could probably survive that if it was a post and I had my padded Nightwing suit on, my odds weren't so great with the newer tramstop and me in police uniform. The new version was a hardier variety, a curving modern structure made of metal that was specifically designed to withstand a car impacting with it. A human body at this speed would be nothing in comparison.

I glanced at the speedometer and swore softly: 48 km/h (or almost 30 mph) to cover about eighty meters. Do the math, and I had about six seconds to react before we hit, and I already knew that there'd be no way to fully avoid an accident in that time. I'd have to reach over and grab the wheel, somehow forcing it to move even though Diablo's frozen hands held it in a white-knuckled grip – no doubt breaking his fingers in the process. Besides, swerving the wheel might only save the front and not the back from hitting the stupid thing.

On the other hand, if I did nothing, if we stayed as we were, at this speed the car would ride up the curved base and definitely flip. Personally, I had no desire to be _outside_ a car doing the somersaults, let alone getting myself creamed in the process of hitting the stupid tramstop in the first place. And if _anyone_ was going to be doing any saving, it was going to have to be  me. Diablo was still frozen and his brain was definitely taking a holiday. Shock, no doubt.

All these thoughts, and more, passed through my head in under point-five of a second...which meant I had about five-point-five seconds left to save us.

_Shit._

 


	4. High-fliers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What goes up...must come down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting today because A) Friday and B) next week I'll be away, so here's an extra dose.
> 
> Beta credit to Char once again.

 

Diablo's fingers or my life...and about five-point-five seconds to decide.

Nah. Not an option. Hell, there wasn't even a _choice_.

I shoved the Bristol's safety on and jammed it one-handed in the small of my back, needing somewhere to put it to get it out of my hands but still protect both myself and it from what was going to happen next. Meanwhile, keeping a one-handed grip on the chassis, I pushed one foot inside the car and stabbed the brakes while simultaneously grabbing the wheel with my right hand and pushing hard with all my strength.

Diablo screamed in my ears as I forced the wheel to move and thus trapped his frozen fingers, but I forced myself to shut it out and keep pushing. It was either sacrifice his fingers, or sacrifice our lives; there was no real choice to make. I concentrated solely on getting the car to swerve. Almost immediately, the brakes worked up a full head of steam and let out piercing squeals in protest as we slowly began to enter a power-slide, the tires literally burning rubber as they started moving in ways they were never designed to try.

_Come on, come on...move!_

I glanced up, checking where we were in relation to the tramstop, and knew that even though the car had barely began to turn aside, it would be enough. It had to be. We were already too close, far too close for my comfort. I took my foot off the brake, praying as I did so that what I'd managed would still save our lives. Sometimes, in situations like this, prayer was just about the one thing going for me, and I'd be crazy to discount something that might actually end up helping.

Still thinking quickly, I shoved Diablo over as far as I could and swung as far into the driver's seat as I could manage with Diablo's feet still on the pedals and his upper body on the other side of the car. I managed to get most of me inside but for my left hand – still gripping the doorframe for leverage – and then I could only brace myself for what was to come. Although I wasn't sure yet what would happen when we hit, no plan fully crystallized inside my head, one thing was certain: whatever happened to me happened to him. If I have to go down, I'll take him with me.

Then there was suddenly no time for second thoughts or even second moves. My time – our time – was up. The taxi hit the tramstop.

For one moment, for one moment of sweet clarity, I thought we'd be all right. The car barely seemed to rise off the ground, so my first thought was that maybe I'd managed to change the car's heading enough, that maybe, just maybe, we weren't going to tip and I wouldn't end up a pavement pancake... And then my hopes came crashing down as my side of the car began to rise, and rise faster and faster. The car had moved, but not enough to make it safe to be in the car right now. Especially at the speed we were still doing.

Then the metal tramstop crashed into the still open door and slammed shut before I could pull my fingers clear.

I cried out, at least I think I did. All I could think was that it _hurt_. I couldn't even feel my fingers, but I knew already that the entire hand was swelling in sympathy...and I also know that I swore. In six different languages. Fluently.

My unplanned shove on Diablo and then the string of colorful language was probably what woke him from his shock-induced trance. He blinked, and promptly jerked spasmodically like the brain was finally kicking into gear and yelling at the body to catch-up to it. Apparently, having cracked bones in his fingers did nothing to stop him swinging both fists and feet at me.

But at that moment I didn't care what he did or hit, because that was also the point when the tramstop finally passed the driver's door. I threw all my weight back, breaking the lock and flinging the door open, finally releasing my shattered fingers. I immediately lost my grip on the car's chassis now that the door wasn't keeping my broken hand in place. Still cursing fluently, I adjusted my balance as I let the useless hand drop to my side while my other hand got busy with Diablo's collar.

I twisted his shirt in my hands, tightening his collar around his throat and only stopping when his eyes began to bulge. "Keep it up and next time I won't stop," I hissed angrily, furious at him and at the stupid situation he'd put me in. Not only had he put us in a car about to flip, but I'd just given myself at least six weeks of desk duty and paperwork while my hand healed, and I **hate** paperwork. Personally, I'm convinced Hell is wallpapered in the stuff, and being a cop only made the belief more credible.

Finally, Diablo stopped struggling and went very still, for the first time looking like he fully realized the bad situation he was in: He was trapped in a car about to roll, in very close quarters with an upset Blüdhaven cop who didn't play by the usual rules...and his actions had just led to said cop being injured. Hell, the idiot was _lucky_ I wasn't playing by the usual rules, because if I was I'd have shot him by now. Right between the eyes, and he'd be deader faster than a speck of dust when Alfred's cleaning.

The only good things about the entire situation that I could see were that (a) he wasn't struggling anymore and that (b) at least with most of me already in the taxi, I didn't have to worry about falling out of the car when we flipped.

Or maybe I did...

The decision wasn't that hard to make. It was either stay here, (mostly) in a car about to roll and hope I kept my grip on the Bristol and Diablo when our world went upside-down, or bail out and take my chances.

So I bailed. Impulsive, yeah, but it sure beat the alternative

Diablo still had a firm grip on my good arm, even if he wasn't struggling anymore. Being versed in more martial arts forms than I had fingers made it easy to use that grip against him to actually increase my leverage and thus my advantage. I used my butt and my back to push the door open fully as I yanked hard on his collar. It was either follow me out or choke, and at least he had the brains not to choose the latter. I ignored the curses he started raining down on my ancestry – I'm Rom; I'm used to it – and kept on pulling. "We're getting out," I told him shortly, probably using too much of my Nightwing tones but feeling too hurt and in pain to bother modulating my voice.

Diablo followed, for the moment at least deciding discretion really was the better course of valor. He put his foot on what was now the floor – it was actually the side of the gearbox – and stood up with me. The car was mere moments away from tipping, and I wanted out before it did. I moved to the side slightly and, still tightly gripping his collar, pulled him up beside me. " _Out._ "

And that was when it happened.

He came up and out alright, but faster than his body said he would, obviously intending all along to rush me and catch me off guard. He slammed his right shoulder into my bad hand and, when I gasped and pulled back in absolute agony, landed a blow on the bullet graze on my shoulder and made it bleed again, no doubt in an effort to get me to fall back and onto the road while he took his chances in the car.

Squinting, trying to blurrily see through the black spots and sparks in my vision, I let go of his collar and grabbed the fist now heading for my torso and twisted. It was nowhere near hard enough to break bones, but the coward screamed anyway. I yanked back with all my strength, pulling towards me and down with all I had even as I sensed the car's center of gravity suddenly shift.

_No time. Now!_

Diablo stumbled and fell towards me, so I continued pulling until he passed me on his way out the door. I grabbed the back of the jacket Diablo still wore as he passed and allowed myself to follow him. My sole selfish move was to push my aching hand under the jacket and tuck it in place using my good arm. Made it hurt like hell, yeah, but I didn't want it getting more damaged, and at least the jacket should protect it somewhat.

And then we were airborne.

Now, don't let anyone tell you that falling from five-feet above the ground like that is better than falling from, say, a twelve-story building. It ain't. It's like cats. Drop one from seven stories and below, and you can kill it. Above seven stories, and almost every single cat will live, minus a broken bone or two. Moral: give a cat or an acrobat (or a vigilante worth his salt) enough time to move and they can survive almost anything. But five feet isn't really enough room to move, and it really isn't enough when you've got another eighty-kilo guy with you as extra baggage. There's just no time to get into a survivable position. Your only option is to hope you don't land on your head or something, and start rolling when you do land to bleed off your momentum.

Me? I was lucky. I was the second one away from the car, and with only five feet to fall there was no way he was going to get me underneath him. With luck, he'd be the one cushioning the impact for me. And with the hold I already had on his jacket, albeit a one-handed hold, I figured I'd be able to control the landing a bit more than the amateur below me could.

Right?

Wrong.

The crafty beggar slammed his elbow right into my ribs while we were still in mid-air, at the very least winding me and at worst hitting a rib. Judging by the spike of pain I just felt, I'd say it was a rib. Probably two of them. I recognized the feeling all too well as I gasped and doubled over, wishing for the thousandth time that the police uniform and Knights jacket had padding in vital areas like my "nightsuit" did. _Join the Force and see the world, they said. All I see is stars._ He promptly twisted underneath me, shedding his jacket and getting rid of my hold on him. The twist put him on his side, however, and when he landed I swear I heard something go _crunch_ before he managed to get a roll going.

Typical dumb amateur, didn't know how to land without hurting himself.

Then it was my turn.

Since I was already doubled over, I at least had the presence of mind to let go his jacket and tighten up into a little ball, bringing up my legs to protect my chest and my ruined hand while wrapping my good arm around my head to prevent a concussion. I'd started to turn over while in mid-air, so keeping it going when I actually hit was fairly easy, all things considered. Nothing cracked, broke, or otherwise affected my vision, so it seemed I was okay, even if I did have cause to regret putting the hunk of metal called the Bristol in the back of my trousers. I felt it every tumble I made until I finally came to a stop about thirteen meters from where I landed. I was going to have a bruise there the size of Montana by the time I was done.

I unfolded myself slowly and carefully, just in case I'd miscalculated and the adrenaline had protected me from feeling an injury. There was also the fact that the rough landing might have damaged the gun. No way did I want it going off even accidentally, damaging some part of me that I'd prefer kept intact. It turned out that nothing happened and nothing seemed to be hurting more than it already had been, but it was still better to be safe than sorry.

By the time I got to my feet, however, Diablo was already sprinting away from the scene. He had a good twenty meters on me and was already gaining. So of course I ran after him while the car finished its topsy-turvy course behind us with plenty of crunching noises of its own.

Maybe, if I'd known what running after him would do to me and to my family, at this point I might have slapped a WingTrace on Diablo and caught up with him later tonight as Nightwing. I could've done it easily – I had a spare WingTrace in the pocket of my jacket, and Diablo wasn't yet out of my throwing range. Or maybe I wouldn't have taken the easy option out, maybe knowing what was coming for me wouldn't have changed what I did. As for which option was the better one...I don't know. I honestly don't know. For me, prescience didn't exactly come with the Kevlar as a package deal. All I know is that I ran after him, determined to bring him down, one way or another.

Logically then, what happened next...was entirely my fault.


	5. Last Gasp

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Running away is for cowards, so therefore giving chase is heroic. And heroes always win the day...right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Charlene, for helping me beta this and for managing to fix up my blunders. And thanks to everyone that gave me feedback, both when I originally posted way back when and now. Hopefully this chapter won't disappoint.

  
Diablo had absolutely no chance of escaping me, even with my aching ribs, smashed hand, and a bullet graze on my shoulder that was still trickling blood. He ran hard, no doubt harder than he'd ran in a long time, but he still couldn't out-run me. For every ten yards he fled, I took three to five yards off him. Even though he had demonstrated fitness – earlier covering 100 metres in three seconds over record time – and he was younger than me, I still knew I was faster.

After all, any half-decent vigilante without meta-abilities like flight or speed needs to know both how to sprint and how to keep it going longer than most athletes could only dream of doing. If you couldn't out-sprint a running perp, then you might as well hang up the nightsuit and return to a normal life for all the good you'll do. And another factor on my side of the equation was the fact that his muscles were bulkier than mine and he had more of them. Some people never learned that bulking up usually only made them slower when it came down to it.

That was one lesson, though, I had a feeling Diablo was learning the hard way. I gained on him with every running-step I took, and he knew it. He'd glanced over his shoulder often enough to see how quickly I was gaining – and saw it often enough to panic.

Which was, of course, exactly what I was hoping for.

He glanced over his shoulder one last time when I was only a few meters away and preparing to tackle him, and really began to look spooked – and in that quick glance, I saw no hint of madness in his eyes. He was, for once, quite firmly grounded in this reality, even if this reality wasn't one he would've wanted a part of. And why would he? He had a cop chasing him who obviously wasn't taking 'no' for an answer and whom he'd already winged with a bullet. Besides, right now, even if he'd managed to seriously injure me, I'd still be chasing him: I had a score to settle with him, consisting of one painful hand and _six weeks_ of paperwork. If he thought he could get away from me, then he had another thing coming.

Of course, that didn't mean he had any plans to make it easy for me. He put on a burst of speed at the last possible moment, pulling ahead and momentarily out of my reaching fingers in what was a last minute dash for freedom. In the distance, barely fifteen meters away, was the entrance to a park, where he'd have a lot more options to evade me with than on an empty sidewalk. If he made it there, he'd pretty much be home and hosed, as they say.

I followed suit and dredged up the strength to increase my speed from hidden reserves I rarely used...and it showed. I already knew that I was really going to pay for this later when I finally stopped, I could feel it in my aching muscles and the burning in my chest. Still, at least the burning pain in my ribs distracted me a little from my poor hand, which was starting to really ache as all this running made the heart pump blood to the extremities, and with the increased circulation came increased pain.

But I pushed all that out of mind and just concentrated on running, exactly like I was trained. It was really the only way to keep going.

Finally, I managed to close the gap down to a meter and, at the top of my run, launched myself at him. I impacted with the top half of his legs, wrapping my good arm around his waist and using my weight and inertia to bring him down to the pavement. I barely managed to ignore the sharp, agonizing pain knifing through my chest telling me it had been a really bad idea to tackle someone when I already had cracked ribs.

True to the way the rest of today had gone, Diablo hit the ground but managed to twist as he fell, my one-handed grip around his waist suddenly not enough to hold him. Suddenly free of my grip, he rolled with the landing and sprang up, intending to dash away. Unfortunately for him, years of training allowed me to spring up with him. I slammed my shoulder into his lower back before he'd even managed to take a step.

He went down again, landing on his stomach with the wind knocked out of him, and this time I had the cuffs ready. I went down with him, landing on top of him on his thighs. Quickly sitting up, I wrapped my legs around his to keep them from moving and grabbed one flailing right arm to hold it in place behind his back and cuffed it, somehow managing to do all that using only my good hand. His other hand wasn't going to be so easy, because by now he'd recovered his breath and was rearing back and blindly swinging his free hand back towards me. I looked up, catching the motion in peripheral vision, and made a quick decision. It was either let it hit me in the ribs, block it with my bad hand, or release the cuffed wrist to use my good hand and thus give him another hand to hit me with.

Once again, there was no real choice.

I quickly raised my left forearm, in time for him to hit it with enough force to break bones if I hadn't managed to let my arm give way underneath the blow at the last moment. I was somehow able to keep hold of his cuffed wrist while I leaned back with the blow and to the side, redirecting the force of the strike down and towards the other hand I still held. Then I quickly leaned back to the other side, rolling my forearm around to the back of his arm and immediately forcing the arm down with everything I had left.

With my damaged hand hanging limply from the end of my arm, I let out a few soft curses when the hand landed on his back, but managed to keep pressing down using my forearm regardless. Compared to all that, it was relatively fairly easy to snap the free cuff around his wrist once I got the arm near my good hand. _Click_

Still using my good hand to keep his hands in place, I leaned back and gasped for breath, panting hard and struggling to regain lost oxygen as I gingerly swiped the sweat off my forehead with my left arm. _One last task._ Releasing my right-handed grip on his hands only to grasp the back of his collar and twist slightly, I leaned down and jerked his head back so I could say my piece. "Diablo Simmons...you're under arrest...for resisting arrest and...using a firearm unlawfully." No need to repeat the full list; that was the judge's job. _Just breathe._ "You have...the right to remain...silent, the right to a...a lawyer, and anything you...do say can and will...be used...against you in court." _Breathe, dammit._ That was enough of his Miranda rights too; he had the basic gist of what other cops could expand on, and I didn't have the breath to spare to tell him more anyway. "...You get me?" I whispered harshly, twisting his collar only a little to emphasize my point.

Diablo found the good sense to nod.

I released his collar and sat back, still breathing heavily and already feeling a creeping exhaustion overtaking my limbs. Too much unexpected exertion in too short a time, that was the problem. It also didn't help matters that I was slowly coming down from one _incredible_ adrenaline rush. It had only been, what, five minutes since he fired the first shot? I felt him struggle lightly underneath me, but dismissed it, knowing my weight would be enough to keep him still until the backup—

The backup. _Damn._ Where the hell were they?

I cursed again under my breath at the failings of the Blüdhaven Police Force. Okay, so it wasn't unusual for backup not to arrive at all in the seedier districts, but only two blocks from the BPD headquarters? Crazy. Pure and simple craziness. _Looks like it's up to me then. Again._

Still quietly gasping for breath, I reached down with my good hand and pulled out my own gun for the first time in the entire affair. I left the Bristol where it was, in my waistband and under my jacket. It was safer there than anywhere else, and besides, it already had enough of my prints on it. As soon as I'd shifted my weight, however, Diablo started struggling for real. _Hnh. It's just like riding a Bronc._

He quickly settled down when I put the cool metal of my gun against his neck. "...Feel that, Dabie?" I whispered in his ear.

He nodded, holding his breath.

"Then don't...make me mad," I threatened in my Bat-voice.

His face paled and he shook his head frantically, desperate to convince me he didn't really mean it. Of course he was lying, but then he didn't need to know I'd also lied about me shooting him. I just hoped he'd be thinking something along the lines of contemplating what I'd do to him if all this had been me being calm. It had to be one of the few times the BPD's bad reputation has come in handy for me.

"Good." I leaned back up, speaking once again in a normal voice, albeit a bit forced. I couldn't seem to fully get my breath back for some reason. "Now get up."

"C-Can't," he answered shakily, finding his voice for the first time in something that wasn't a diabolical laugh.

"Oh, that's right," I said, feigning sudden remembrance. "I'm sitting on ya...aren't I?" I unwrapped my legs from around his and stood, gun aimed at him the entire time. "Now stand, Dabie...and remember...you're in my sights," I warned, using the pauses for what I hoped were quiet gasps for breath.

He stood awkwardly with his hands cuffed, forced to bring his legs up underneath and then put his weight on them as he straightened. When he looked up, he was looking straight down the barrel of my gun, held steadily in my good hand. My other hand, the one I'd long since lost feeling in even if the pain had never stopped, hung loosely by my side as if I'd forgotten about it – fat chance of that.

His gaze flicked in that direction and I quickly flicked the gun's safety off and again forced myself to speak as normally as possible, "Don't even think...you can out-race a bullet... Besides...you're already under arrest... Don't make it worse." His brown eyes flicked back to my face and I saw in them his understanding and grudging compliance. I gave him a grim smile and jerked my head behind me in the direction of the abandoned taxi. "Now...start walking."

He walked.

Only once he was past me did I allow myself to wince and hug my swollen left hand to my body. The pain lessened with the slightly decreased circulation, but only a little. It was still going to need splints, maybe even surgery and a cast, to fix the damage. That, along with the ribs I was really starting to feel, would keep me on desk duty – and paperwork duty – for far longer than would be good for my mental health. By the time I healed, I knew I'd be really considering the advantages of that locked rubber room I'd get for screaming my frustrations at the world.

I followed quietly behind Diablo, gun trained on him the entire time. We headed back to the crashed taxi, which had by now finished its acrobatics, having ended up on its roof in quite a sorry state. Yep, definitely a write-off. At least ol' Willy Jacknife wouldn't be terrorizing Blüdhaven's citizens for a few weeks – maybe even a coupla months if we were lucky.

We had made it about halfway back before I finally heard the sound of approaching sirens. I snorted under my breath. _Typical Blüdhaven_. The cavalry and backup were, as usual, arriving long after the need for them had passed.

"Stop and kneel," I ordered Diablo and he readily complied, for which I was incredibly glad. It was safer that way, both for him and me. If he was kneeling and I had my gun already on him, there'd be no need for some trigger-happy cop to use him as target practice. And as long as he was down there, I figured he couldn't be causing me any more trouble.

I stayed behind him and rubbed my chest with a pained grimace, wondering idly what damage I'd done when I'd tackled the guy. One or two cracked, or even broken, ribs shouldn't be hurting and affecting my breathing this bad. I closed my eyes as I felt another spasm of pain in my chest. Maybe I'd done an extra rib in when I tackled him. Wouldn't be surprised, knowing my luck. I certainly had enough pain for it. _Great. Just what I didn't need._ I immediately started breathing shallowly, which eased the pain somewhat.

The sirens were even closer now, barely five seconds away if I had to guess. I could hear the engines. My eyes opened when I heard a scrape of clothing, but found Diablo apparently hadn't moved. His hands were still cuffed behind his back where I could see them and he was still kneeling. _Nope, nothing to worry about._ I must just be getting edgy now that it was finally over.

Sure enough, just as I reached zero on my mental countdown, squealing tires and shouted commands heralded the much-belated appearance of Blüdhaven's Finest. I just stood back and let them have at it, although I did put my gun away when I saw they had Diablo covered. Two of them came over and corralled the psychotic perp, each taking hold of one arm and guiding the _Latino_ to the back of the paddy wagon that had also pulled up, while another officer approached me.

I recognized him immediately. Officer Kelly Chavez, one of the few good guys on the Force in this crazy town. We'd been put in the same taskforce once or twice, enough to know each other by face and name even if we'd never technically been assigned together as partners. He came over towards me looking more than a little surprised to see me. " _Dick?_ Dick Grayson? Is that you?"

"Last I checked," I replied quietly, trying not to breathe too deeply.

"And this is your handiwork?" he continued, eyebrows raised and nodding his head towards the smashed taxi lying on its roof behind him. There was glass all over the place, and more than a few engine parts. That was one car that wouldn't be going anywhere except the dump.

"Partly," I responded wearily. "Diablo did most of it... I was just...along for the ride," I finished, grimacing again as my chest again complained at the exertion of speaking. Rubbing it didn't do a thing to ease it.

"Ribs?"

I nodded. "Elbowed me...when we were...getting off the taxi." I closed my eyes for a moment at another painful spasm in my chest. It was getting harder and harder to take a decent breath. "That...was after...I did my hand."

Kelly swore softly when he saw the swollen hand I was still hugging close to my chest. It must've looked pretty bad by now – I hadn't been game enough to look at it since we'd gotten off the taxi. "You're gonna need a hospital for that, Grayson." With that, he led me over to the nearest police cruiser and had me lean against it. Having that extra support was more of a relief than I liked to admit, even if it felt like I had a plank sticking into my back. For some reason I couldn't think what it was.

"So'll Diablo," I paused for a couple of breaths that accomplished nothing. "He did...something...when...he landed. And his...fingers too." I paused again when I finally realized what was pressing into my back. I reached back and pulled out the Bristol, shoving it at Kelly. "Here's...his gun." Leaning back against the cruiser, I rubbed my aching chest again. _Breathe Grayson, dammit!_ Even breathing shallowly wasn't helping anymore. Hell, breathing was helping much of anything. I was starting to feel like I was trying to swallow the moon whenever I inhaled.

"You're awfully white, Grayson," Kelly observed, voice rising in alarm. "You need the hospital ASAP." He turned away and yelled over his shoulder, "Get the medics over here! Now!"

"Family's doc...L-Leslie...Leslie Thom'son," I managed to gasp out, the pain in my chest getting worse and worse with each strangled breath. "...G-Gotham. Runs a...sh-shelter."

"I'll call her," Kelly assured me. "Just save your breath, Grayson. I don't want you dying on me."

Dying? Who said anything about dying? Just breathing would be nice.

He yelled over his shoulder again for the ambulance and I nodded anyway, gritting my teeth against the pain. I closed my eyes and grimly concentrated on my breathing. I heard voices coming near, footsteps and exclamations at something. I think it was me they were talking about, but then again everything was getting distant, far away, like I was at one end of the tunnel and they were at the other.

But then I heard something else, something startlingly close and so familiar that there was no way I could ignore it: The sounds of confusion, of grunts as blows connected and the thuds of bodies falling to the ground.

Barely able to breathe, I forced my eyes open and squinted. Everything was blurry. The big white thing next to me was probably Kelly, and there were a few other whitish-blobs with him. More officers, I guessed. And dead ahead of me was another white blob that kept moving up and down, like maybe the earth was shaking...? I shook my head to clear it and squinted again. It was no quake. The owner of the white-thing was running. Running. Towards me? But how—

Gunshots.

And then my chest and leg exploded in pain. My knees gave way beneath me as I gasped for breath and fell to the ground. Panic set in immediately when I realized I couldn't breathe and my lungs were already burning up. Everything was red hot, burning hot all over... And then it went quiet, deathly silent, and I suddenly realized I was still falling...falling forever . . . .

* * *

_...Voices. Confused. Concerned? Calling to someone. Who? Him? Someone._

_"Damn. Where's all that blood coming from!"_

_Bright light, white hot and bleeding into his eyes. "Grayson? You with us?"_

_Were they still talking to him? Or someone else? Whatever. Groan in reply; can't speak. No energy, no air, not much of a voice either. It doesn't matter. Just go away. Leave him alone. Let him be..._

_"He's not breathing!"_

_Now they're probing him, pushing in his chest. Sharp, painful, like a knife stabbing him._

_Hurts._

_Everything hurts._

_Too much._

_It's time to go. Leave him alone._

_Like the air did. The light's gone too. No light; just white. Very bright and very white . . . . ._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BTW, posting may be iffy for the next few weeks. We're moving halfway up the state (7hrs away) -- the house sold yesterday and we're moving in 3 weeks or less (I'm thinking less) -- so I'm posting this while I still feel somewhat sane.


	6. Faith At Any Cost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Your heart must ever cherish_  
>  _Some faith at any cost._  
>  _Some hope, some dream to cling to,_  
>  _Some rainbow in the sky,_  
>  _Some melody to sing to,_  
>  _Some service that is high._  
>  \--Harriet Du Autermont--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Moving. Ugh.
> 
> Also. Beta = awesomeness = totally a thing.
> 
> Also. Another thing. I'm picking up the story threads a few hours later. Enjoy. *g*

  
The quiet hospital room held no sign of movement, nothing an observer could quickly pick out as something that meant activity and thus life.

The windows were shut, the curtains pulled, allowing no air past their combined barriers to stir the darkened room beyond. There was no fan to swirl lazily overhead to provide some distraction from the monotony. The walls were typical of a hospital room, a mix between beige and taupe that was supposed to be soothing but just came off as nauseating if stared at too long. There wasn't even a print to break up and interfere with the stark...blankness of the walls. Not that anyone was spending much time staring at the walls; all attention was focused on the single hospital bed, and its single, unmoving, occupant.

Yet as much as there was no movement, there was still _life_ in here, even if only in those silently watching without moving. Although there were apparently three chairs in the room, only one was occupied, the one pulled up alongside the bed, where its occupant was in easy reach of the patient's torso and hands. At this particular moment, however, the chair's occupant was too busy sleeping to reach out. Head resting on the bed on folded arms, resting on the prone arm of the patient, so soundly asleep that they made no move at all. Not even any REM movement of the eyes disturbed the room's stillness.

Nor, for that matter, did the room's other occupant make a move. He was standing, leaning against the wall opposite the bed, one arm folded across the chest and the other cupping his face as if thoughtful...or quietly despairing. Either emotion fitted the man at the moment. Thoughts and memories stirred through his head, of times past – far sweeter times – but mixed in with them were the sombre words of the doctors, their predications and diagnosis of the room's patient being anything but hopeful. _'Too long without air, too much trauma,'_ they'd said, _'too much for us to work with.'_ Even the family doctor, the only one who knew the most, had all but given up hope.

_'It's just too close to call... I'm sorry, Bruce. It's up to him, now.'_

For all this, however, Bruce Wayne might as well have been made of stone for all the movement he made. There was no indication of the turmoil that lay beneath the surface of the man, of the despairing emotions running through his soul. That, at least, he could control... Hell, it was the _only_ thing he could control, and so he controlled his outward show of emotion fiercely and without letup, as if it was his lifeline to sanity and to reason...because it was.

In fact, the only real sign of life ironically came from the bed and its occupant...or rather, the machines hooked up to the sleeping patient. These, at least, made noise, even if it was artificial. The machine monitoring the heart beeped rhythmically, if monotonously, never changing in pitch or spacing. At least it was beeping. That was something. He had to believe that. The ventilator was much the same, humming and thrumming quite routinely and without letup, although it did sound more like an asthmatic dinosaur trying to be quiet than a life-saving machine. It kept the chest moving though, and that was all that mattered. The EEG machine for the brain was much quieter, though. The brain activity was down on par with the comatose and those for whom death was not far away.

The man tried not to think about that, about death being near, although the other option – comatose – wasn't much better. But at least with the idea of a coma, there was the hope, however dim, that his son would one day awaken...and death was so _final_. A _lot_ more final. And there was  no way that Bruce Wayne was going to let Dick Grayson die, no matter what all the doctors and even Leslie said. So he stood, waited, and watched for that small sign of life, the small twitch that meant his heart could start beating once more, that he could start living again. And still the machines beeped and huffed on into the night, unchanging and unceasing.

The machines never stopped, and his son never stirred.

* * *

The first change in the room came not long after dawn had come, shortly after the golden light of the sunrise had faded into the whiter light of the proper daytime.

That was when the door opened and another occupant came into the room, shutting the door as soon as they were through. "How is he?" inquired soft tones reminiscent of the English countryside, barely above a whisper for the sake of the one still sleeping in the chair by the bed. Thus was the entrance of Alfred Pennyworth, adopted father-grandfather and butler extraordinaire.

Bruce shrugged, his first movement in hours, but his eyes never left the bed. "The same," he replied in the same hushed tone, his voice even and not allowing out any hint of his tumbling thoughts.

"I see," the kindly butler sighed quietly, the only sign he showed that he, too, had hoped for an overnight miracle, that the doctors' prognosis and time-frame had been wrong. But it had only been that, a hope, not a reality. It looked like he had to deliver that message after all. Alfred cleared his throat slightly. "Doctor Thompkins wants to see you, Master Bruce," he added in the same, soft tones. "She has some...news you may want to hear."

"She can tell me here," the reply came, harder edged than before but just as quiet. Just as final, just as lethal. "I'm not leaving him."

"Master Bruce, please," Alfred remonstrated gently. "Let me watch him while you talk to her. I promise to call you the moment there's any sign," he avowed, his deepening accent confirming his sincerity.

Strangely, there was no argument.

"...Okay," Bruce replied softly, the only sign of his tiredness. Only an extremely weary Bruce would agree to leave, even if only for a few minutes and then only if he was leaving his son in Alfred's capable hands. And so he left, more than a little reluctantly, in search of his family doctor and a small scrap of hope...because that small scrap of hope was all he had left.

As soon as the door closed quietly behind his eldest charge, the English gentleman went over to the second chair in the room and settled himself down. It was surprisingly semi-comfortable for a hospital chair, but he paid it no heed. He, too, had his attention firmly on the bed's occupant.

The room was silent for well over a minute. Then the solitude that had settled over everyone was broken by a single word:

"Alfred?"

He started, surprised for one of the few times in his life – he could count such times on one hand and have digits left over – to hear a voice not his own. The brief spurt of hope that Dick had awoken died a quick death when he recognised the voice. It was definitely female, not male, and still husky with sleep. "Yes, my child?" he answered gently.

"Do you think he'll make it?" Barbara Gordon asked quietly, also needing someone to give her the courage to keep hoping, to keep trusting that the love of her life would return to them.

"Of course," he responded quickly, as if anything else were inconceivable – and perhaps it was. "Richard is not one to go quietly into the night." A pause, then he continued more firmly then before: "He'll come back to us, my dear Barbara. We just have to wait."

And wait they did, not in despair, but in trust, in hope.

* * *

The room's mood changed once more an hour later, long after the dawn, when the door opened to admit another visitor. This one was slight, smaller than the others, but quick, quiet and sure on his feet like few could dream of being, despite the gangly limbs of youth and puberty. It was Tim Drake, a part of their family in all ways but blood.

"There's been no change yet," Alfred quietly replied, before the inevitable question could be asked once the door was shut. The news was not good, but still Tim smiled in return. _No news is good news. Yet._ There was still hope. He would believe in that. He approached the bed with that in mind. It gave him courage to look upon his sleeping brother – he and Dick had needed no blood ties to know they were brothers. That was why Dick was only sleeping to Tim, not borderline comatose. His brother would never willingly abandon him, of that Tim was sure, let alone the rest of his family.

Besides, Dick certainly looked like he was only sleeping, his face all relaxed and innocent, untouched by life's worries and burdens. But that was an illusion Tim could maintain only if he ignored the machines, still blinking and beeping and humming away, if he didn't see the IV drip running carrying antibiotics directly into Dick's right hand. He'd also have to ignore the way the other hand was heavily splinted and encased in a fibreglass cast to keep it immobile, let alone the one-size-fits-all hospital garment that was far too big but somehow still too small to contain his brother.

Tim tore his gaze away, directing it instead towards the ever-vigilant girlfriend by his brother's side. "How you doing, Barbara?" he asked softly, not game to call her 'Babs'. That was Dick's nickname for her, not Tim's. No one needed that painful reminder right now.

She shrugged listlessly. "Okay, I guess," came her tired reply. Sleeping in a hospital was never a comfortable or refreshing affair. Her eyes had dark bags underneath and her clothes were as rumpled as her reddish-auburn hair. She'd dozed all night with half an ear cocked for any sign that Dick was waking up. She did indeed look far from her best...but most friends and family did when visiting loved ones in hospital.

"Do you want some coffee or something from the cafeteria?" he offered, knowing Barbara needed to keep her own fluids up. Coffee was hardly ideal, being a diuretic as well as containing caffeine, but it was technically still a fluid and at least heading in the right direction. If he could get coffee into her, he might also be able to get some juice or water in there as well, maybe even some sugar. She needed nourishment, just like he did – that was the only reason he'd choked down breakfast this morning, even though worry had kept him from tasting a single crumb of it.

"Sure," she replied just as tiredly as before, then cautioned, "but you'd better pick up a few napkins as well." The last three cups she'd had here had leaked all over the place. "Just make sure the coffee's strong," she added, almost as an afterthought, although that was one thing that _was_ certain about cafeteria coffee: it was always going to be strong, but the taste was debatable and would probably end up as something of a mix between year-old gym socks and wet cardboard depending on how much sugar you dumped in.

Tim hid his relief at her acceptance; it was just the opening he'd hoped for. "Then you'd better come with me," he told her, injecting a small note of helplessness into his voice while sending a quick confirming glance towards the elderly gentleman silently watching them all, "cause you know I can't get your coffee the way you like it." Besides, if he got her to the cafeteria, he had more of a chance of getting something else into her as well. World's greatest hacker she may be, but she was still just as susceptible to impulse buying like every other female he knew.

Barbara, however, was not cooperating like he'd planned. She shrugged, her gaze never leaving the bed and the cast-free hand she continually stroked. "So? Almost any coffee will do right now, Tim."

"That's the point," he pressed gently. "This is _cafeteria_ coffee from a Blüdhaven hospital. You'd better come with me to make sure it's digestible, let alone coffee."

She hesitated, hearing the truth in his words and also from spending far too much time in hospitals herself. If even the best hospitals in the world had cafeteria's serving coffee made from the bottom of a swill-bucket that could melt solid metal spoons, how much worse would it be in a Blüdhaven public hospital? But still... "I don't want to leave him..." she protested faintly, a faint waver in her voice.

"He won't be alone," Tim promised, seeing her hesitation and pressing his advantage. "Alfred's here already, and the Titan's said they'll be here in ten minutes. He _won't_ be alone if he wakes up while we're gone."

Barbara finally nodded, reluctantly admitting that she wouldn't mind getting some air. Her stomach had been empty for hours anyway, and it needed something if she wanted the doctors to let her stay and keep her vigil. "Fine," she sighed and gave Dick's hand a final squeeze, then turned and abruptly fixed a hard glare on Tim, "but those ten minutes are _all_ I'm giving you."

She and Tim left then, but not after more than one long glance at their unconscious friend, brother, and companion. Their thoughts were the same as they shut the door behind them:

_Come back to us, Dick._

It was only once they were gone that Alfred left his perch in the room's second chair. He stood and walked over to the windows, pulling open the curtains, expertly adjusting the blinds to let in the ambient light but none of the sun's rays. Satisfied, he went to the bed and retrieved the chair that had been pushed aside to make way for Barbara's wheelchair. He put it down in the same place Barbara had had her chair and settled down to keep his own vigil.

Reaching over, the kindly old man took hold of Dick's undamaged hand and clasped it gently between his own hands, careful to avoid the IV line taped to its back. And then he began to talk softly, the start of a running monologue based not in despair or in hope, but in faith. "Come back to us soon, dear Richard. I fear I'm getting too old for this kind of waiting..."

* * *

Precisely ten minutes after they left, accurate right down to the second, Tim held open the door for Barbara as she wheeled herself inside the room. He went to enter the room behind her, but happened to look up just before he passed the door. That was when, by sheer coincidence, he got to see down into the waiting area. Turning back, he popped his head around the door Barbara had just gone through.

"Alfred?" he called softly.

"Yes, Master Tim?"

"The Titans are here. I'm gonna go and talk to them, okay?"

Alfred nodded and gave him his blessing, his attention never wavering far from the bed as Barbara silently joined him in their vigil.

Tim backed out of the room and quietly shut the door behind him, then quickly made his way down to the reception area in the waiting room. Four of the five core Titans were already at the reception desk, dressed casually but making a statement all the same. He got there just as Donna started to speak, the three boys – Garth, Roy, and Wally – waiting anxiously behind her.

"Hi, we'd like to see Dick Grayson. Can you tell us what room he's in please?"

"I'm sorry," the young nurse at the desk replied apologetically, "but we're only letting close friends and family in to see him at the moment." The name-tag on her white uniform was Jocelyn.

"It's okay," Tim spoke up from where he'd stopped a few metres away. "They're Dick's best friends, and they're pretty much our family anyway."

"Okay then," nurse Jocelyn replied, smiling at the teen. "Do you want me to take them to him, Timothy?"

He shook his head, returned a weary half-smile of his own. "Nah. I'm heading there already, but thanks anyway Jocelyn." Tim then turned his attention to the Titans. "Down this way, guys. It's not far."

Roy waited until they were out of earshot of the reception desk before sighing. "Man, how do you and Dick _do_ that?"

Tim shot him a puzzled look. "Do what?"

"Pick up every good-lookin' chick in a five mile radius. It's gotta be the Bat-thing."

"Roy," Donna chided, blushing faintly. "This isn't the time or the place."

"Besides," Tim offered with another tired smile to cover his own embarrassment, "I didn't even notice."

"So who's in there with him now?" Garth broke into the banter with his naturally quiet voice.

"Alfred and Barbara," the reply quickly came. "Bruce is arguing with the doctors about his treatment." Tim didn't elaborate. He couldn't. He didn't believe it himself...not yet.

"Ouch," Roy winced, imagining the scene all too well, having been on the receiving end of one of Batman's dressing-downs far too many times himself. "They don't know what they got themselves into. Twenty says the docs'll lose."

"No bet there," replied Tim, inwardly cringing at how forced he sounded and could only hope it wasn't as obvious to the Titans as it was to him. Shaking his head slightly to clear his thoughts, he stopped outside the door to Dick's room but didn't offer to show them in just yet. "Before you see him, I'd better tell you what to expect," he warned, his voice dropping naturally into more serious tones. "He's unconscious, almost comatose, and as much as I hate to say it, that's probably the best place for him right now. Not only are his heart and brain wired for sound, but they also put him on a ventilator almost as soon as he got here because his lungs are too weak for him to breathe by himself, and you know what he thinks about _that_."

They all exchanged a knowing glance. If there was one thing Nightwing hated with a passion, it was being stuck on a ventilator, and not being able to speak had never restricted his ability to make his feelings on that matter clear. Put it this way: if anyone ever said that the eyes couldn't shout at you (in colorful languages, no less) obviously hadn't met Dick on a ventilator.

Donna rubbed her temples tiredly. It was a relief to finally hear that Dick was relatively okay – in their line of work, a still beating heart could classify as 'okay' – but it still shook her to hear how bad it was. Both as himself and as Nightwing, Dick had always seemed virtually invincible, so to hear how far he been taken down...she didn't know whether to laugh in her joy that he lived or to cry her grief for him to the heavens. She didn't even have to look at her fellow Titans to know that they were feeling the same conflicting emotions. Swallowing hard, she forced her voice to work past the lump in her throat. "What happened to him?" she asked softly, hoarsely.

"Did you see the news this morning?" Tim asked first, apparently changing the subject.

"Yeah, but what's that got to do with Dick?" Roy protested even as his stomach was sinking, afraid he already knew the answer to his question.

Tim just ignored him for the moment. "What about the segment on the man that yesterday opened fire on Blüdhaven citizens during the late lunch hour, putting a few civilians in the hospital?"

"Sure did," Wally replied proudly. He rarely watched the news, but he'd managed to sit down long enough to watch a record five minutes yesterday. "They said a young police officer took him down, but the taxi the gunman tried to escape in ended up flipping. The perp was taken into custody and then to the hospital, along with a few citizens he'd injured along the way. They said no one was seriously hurt before the officer chased the guy down..." He trailed off, the horrified realisation suddenly hitting him and hitting hard. "Don't tell me Dick...?"

Tim nodded wearily. "Yep. Yours truly was the officer... _and_ one of the civilians," he indicated with a nod of his head towards the room beside them. "He was off-duty at the time. What the media didn't say is that the perp was vindictive with a capital 'V'. After Dick took the nutcase into custody, he somehow escaped his cuffs, knocked a few cops unconscious, pulled out a gun, and opened fire again."

"Great Hera," Donna exclaimed softly. "Was anyone hurt?"

"Yeah." Tim nodded again towards the hospital room, his expression tireder than ever. "He was aiming for Dick, so he was hurt the worst. In the leg and in the chest. They think they got the bullets out in surgery, but that isn't quite what's keeping him out. The anesthetic would've worn off," he checked his watch, "about three hours ago." He rubbed at his tired face, really wishing there was an easier way to someone tell bad news. "While he was pursuing Diablo – that's the perp's name, by the way – he got hammered in the lungs...by an elbow and then by a bullet. Apparently two ribs pierced his left lung. Just after he got shot, he, um, stopped breathing when his lung collapsed, and they, uh, literally had to stick a tube in his chest to get him breathing again." Breathing deeply, he forced the last few words out: "And they kinda...um, lost him, for a while there."

Tim quickly turned away from them then to face the wall, unable to meet their shocked gazes. He ran his hand through his disheveled hair and absently smoothed down his rumpled clothes, knowing he looked like hell – a night of pacing instead of sleeping will do that to you – and felt like hell too. Actually, more than anything else, he felt...kinda lost, and it showed.

For that matter, the Titans didn't look much better. None of them had slept well since receiving the terse phone call from Oracle late last night that Dick was in a critical condition in a hospital and that she'd get back to them when she had more details. When the phone call didn't come, they'd taken it upon themselves to visit Dick. They'd been waiting outside the Blüdhaven hospital, waiting for the doors to open, for hours – and just like with Tim, the stress was showing.

Finally Roy sighed and spoke into the silence: "Sounds like a pneumo."

"Say what?" That was from Wally.

"A pneumo, short for pneumothorax," explained Roy, drawing on his medical training as a government agent. "When a rib breaks, it can tear a hole in your lungs. When this happens, the inhaled air goes out through the hole in the lungs, and gets trapped between the rib-cage and the lungs. Given enough time, the pressure will flatten your lungs and your heart up against the other side of your ribcage. If you haven't stopped breathing by then, the heart failure will kill ya." He turned back to Robin and asked, "So how long did they lose him for?"

Tim shrugged. "I don't know. A few minutes, maybe less, maybe more; no one really told me a figure. All I know is that the doctors are arguing about _how much_ damage there'll be, _not_ whether there'll be any. They think that's why he's borderline comatose. So we won't know anything for certain until..." Tim's voice choked and he quickly turned to hide the betraying tears. He had to take a couple of deep breaths before he choke out: "That is, _if_ he wakes up."

"Do they have a time-frame?" Garth asked softly.

Tim swallowed hard and brushed away the tears, forcing his face to at least appear composed before he turned to face them. He shrugged again and suddenly looked every one of his sixteen years...and more. "Sure. Anywhere from now till whenever, and all the way down to never. They're still favoring the 'never' bit." The boy looked down at the last word, a heavy sigh following from his lips as his hand once again raked through his hair.

Donna turned and looked pensively towards the shut door into his room, fear for the friend she loved as a brother flickering over her face before she managed to hide it. "So...now it's a waiting game..."

"Yeah. Now...we wait," Tim whispered hoarsely, closing his eyes and seeing the still form of his brother flashing before his eyes in a relentless onslaught.

After a few moments, he managed to push the images away enough to open the door and let the Titans file in to see Dick. He didn't follow them in himself. He'd talked to Dick for hours yesterday, and talking to the Titans just now had left him feeling emotionally raw. Talking about it had forced it to start hitting home how badly Dick had been hurt, and how much he already missed his brother. And it wasn't just Dick that he missed, it was the little things he did too. That cheeky smirk that promised entire worlds of mischief waiting to be unleashed, the million-watt smile that never failed to melt those on whom Dick bestowed it, and those god-awful _puns_ of his that made you want to laugh and puke at the same time as you bashed some criminal's ears too...

Tim sighed and shook his head, rubbing his temples wearily. This was gaining him nothing beyond a headache. Maybe that nurse on reception – Jocelyn, wasn't it? – had something for his head. Yeah, that was it. He'd go talk to Jocelyn and see if she let him borrow a few aspirin and then a phone so he could plead in sick or something to Brentwood. Then he'd go looking for Bruce.

An hour later, Tim hadn't got much beyond the aspirin and phone-call and was still talking to Jocelyn, who was now off-duty. Actually, he was doing the talking, and she was listening to him. More to the point, she was just letting him talk, mostly about the man he considered his brother. The kind young nurse knew better than most that not only was it therapeutic for him, but it was also distracting...a distraction from his worry that she knew he craved.

The latest story was of the time Dick had helped him teach a long-suffering mutt some neat tricks a few years ago. He was careful to edit out the bits about picking up the mutt after a night out as Robin then a few adventures with the mutt in the cave, and all that kinda thing, but he couldn't help but include (and exaggerate a little) the bits about Alfred's reactions and a few of his and Dick's more unusual training adventures in the Manor. Then he was just getting up to the bit of how they'd finally dressed the mutt up (like a certain big-dark-and-you-know-who vigilante) and sprang the mutt on—

Bruce.

All words died in Tim's throat and the blood slowly drained from his face as he saw the man in question coming down the hallway. Bruce was back. And he was on the warpath. Somehow, he wasn't surprised to see the Titans hurriedly exit Dick's room as Bruce entered. He might be Robin, Batman's partner and so used to some of Bruce's more unusual "mood swings", but not even he would be game to face this Bruce. Sometimes discretion really _was_ the better part of valour.

It was only a few seconds later that Alfred and Barbara emerged as well, and one look at their faces was enough to enough to make his heart clench in fear.

Barbara's face was solemn and forced into composure, as if the sheer strength of her will held back soul-deep pain, but that wasn't what made Tim feel like his heart had stopped beating. She'd pretty much looked like that ever since she'd arrived at the hospital. Rather, it was the glimpse of Alfred's eyes before the older man's outward mask dropped. And he knew...or thought he did. _No...no. It can't be..._

Without even being really aware of what he was doing, he was saying his goodbyes to Jocelyn and hurrying towards his surrogate family as they headed to one of the waiting rooms, hurrying to catch what Alfred was already starting to explain.

The young nurse smiled sadly and watched him go. It had been nice, while it lasted, to listen to such a handsome and caring young man talk about a family that obviously didn't need blood ties to love each other. A lot of people that came through the hospital doors never having had the chance to have what they had, and she envied all of them for it.

And she prayed that their love would be enough to hold this family together through what was to come. Because sometimes prayer was all she had to offer.

* * *

. . .

_Numb. Lost. Alone._

_No one here. No one. No one but me._

_And it's grey. Very grey. Not white. Cool._

_Safe._

_I can drift. There's no pain._

_Pain is bad. Don't want pain. Empty is better. Much better. Safer._

_Quieter. Muted.No soft talking. No words I can't quite hear. Quieter...better._

_No._

_Don't. Don't want it. Just...go away._

_Stop._

_Tell the voices to go away. Can't listen, don't wanna listen._

_So don't. Forget it. Relax. Let it go. Be lost. Be numb. No pain. Better. Easier. Safer._

_Blacker now...not grey. That bad? No. No worry... Let it be._

_Just... Let it be . . ._

. . .


	7. Hope To Cling To

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All they can do is watch...and wait for the end to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Betas still awesome. All mistakes left are mine, I earned them.

  
"They want to _**what**!_ "

That miniature explosion was Roy Harper. At least, it sounded particularly loud in the waiting area, where the other members of Dick's extended "family" – as Alfred called them in his mind – stood in silence as the archer's rage washed over them and through them.

After a moment's silence, Alfred sighed and repeated what he'd been told by an irate Bruce barely a minute earlier. "The Blüdhaven doctors want to turn off the young Master's life support," he answered quietly, even though he was fairly sure the archer's words hadn't been to obtain that answer.

"You've. Got. To. Be. _Kidding_ ," Roy bit out, his voice tight and rough with the strength of his rage. His hands clenched quickly into fists by his side, because otherwise he'd start hunting for a projectile of some kind and that really wasn't good conduct in a hospital. Didn't mean he'd stop speaking his mind. "No way in _hell_ are they getting anywhere _near_ him!"

Alfred raised only one eyebrow and let the momentary blasphemy pass. "And if he never wakes up and stays tied to that bed? Or if he _does_ wake up and isn't...isn't himself anymore?" he replied, a hidden edge in his voice – only discernible to those that knew him well – as the only indication of how much effort it took to continue being the brutal voice of reason. "Could we really let him live his days out that way? Do you _really_ think he would want that?"

Garth shook his head slowly. "But...I don't understand," he half-whispered, such a contrast to his fellow Titan that his words cut right through the gathering tension. "How...how could they suggest this? I thought he was on the road to healing..."

"It's the level of injuries," Babs supplied, her voice holding a strained quality to it, as if she was holding everything together by only the strength her will and her stubborn-ness – which she was. "It's not just the fact that he stopped breathing for a while at the scene, guys. It's the four times he crashed before they got him stable," she told them, her voice getting rougher with every word she uttered. "It's the lung wound that might've done more damage than the scans showed. It's the fact that he's pretty much in a coma right now, and they've got no idea _why_ , let alone when... _if ever_ he'll wake up again." A beat. "It's...it's everything," she finished in a hoarse whisper, unable to continue even if she wanted to as she clenched her eyes shut and struggled to regain her fragile control.

Alfred smiled sadly, sending Barbara a thankful glance for attempting to share the load of explaining what still seemed unthinkable.

"Look, I know he's in a bad way..." Tim protested weakly, still shaken and trying to wrap his mind around this latest development, "...but to want us to pull the plug? That's just... _wrong!_ " He shook his head repeatedly to deny it, but could do nothing to stop the tears that traitorously gathered.

Alfred quickly crossed the room to stand before the young hero, placing gentle hands on the youth's silently shaking shoulders. "I know, young one," he whispered. "But believe me, my Timothy, the doctors here would not suggest this lightly. And I know it comes as a surprise," the elderly gentleman continued in his soothing British tones, gently squeezing his grandson's shoulders, "but that's...that's the way it it is, right now. I'm afraid Dick's...the young master's been on borrowed time since he collapsed at the scene. The doctors...no doubt feel it would be kinder to let nature take its course, considering the level of injuries he received."

"But they don't _know_ him!" Tim abruptly exploded as he pushed away from Alfred, a drop of salty tear trickling down his cheek to betray the fury on his face. "They don't know how much he's already fighting! They're just doctors, not his family. _They're wrong!_ "

Unable to bear this any longer, Tim turned then and fled – or tried to.

He didn't get far before Barbara stopped his flight with her chair and with the hand she gently placed on his arm. "Be that as it may, Tim," she told him, her own voice sounding strangled, "we still have to decide what we're going to do."

"What do you mean!" This came from Roy again. "You're not seriously considering this...this _monstrosity_ , are you?" His tone was nothing less then accusing of betrayal and all the sins under the heavens, nothing short of furious for what they were suggesting.

And it was once again left to Alfred to be the voice of reason. "Yes," he said simply, swallowing hard and thankful his gentle accent covered his own emotions. "As much as we might want otherwise, my young friend, we just have to accept that we...might soon need to say goodbye to our dear friend and brother." _And my grandson_ , he silently added to himself, but everyone still heard his unspoken words. Despite his outward calm, it was just as hard for him as it was for them.

Tim pushed his hands over his eyes, drawing on the much-needed strength in Barbara's stable hand on his arm and futilely trying to force away the tears. He sniffled and looked at the floor, suddenly ashamed of his attempted flight. "I'm sorry Alfred," he apologized softly, "I'm sorry I got angry at you. I just..." he trailed off and rubbed his wet face again, feeling far older than his years. "It's just not fair," he mumbled numbly. "I can't..."

"Life's rarely fair, young Timothy," gently replied Donna, the heart of the Titans team, as she approached him. "But at least we have each other to help us through these moments." The empathetic hero then wrapped the trembling youth in her warm embrace and held him close.

Donna closed her eyes and stood there with him, only holding him as he bravely struggled not to break down, and then supporting Tim when he finally surrendered to the tears and as he gripped onto her for dear life. And there was no one there, from friends and family to hospital workers alike, that was not touched by the emotional collapse of the young teen, that did not share in the tears for the part of their life that they were losing, the part of all their hearts that was slowly breaking as they struggled to accept the truth presented to them.

"So that's it?" Roy finally murmured, his voice sounding strange even to his own ears as he brushed away a few traitorous droplets of his own. "We just say goodbye...and that's it? They pull him off life support and we just... _walk away?_ "

It took a long moment for Alfred to compose himself enough to respond, his shining eyes fixed on young Timothy, heart aching as he saw how tightly he held onto Donna as his lifeline to sanity. "Yes," he finally responded. "We walk away...and while we grieve for what we've lost, we also rejoice in the life he shared with us." He turned to meet Roy's gaze, for the first time allowing his own emotions to show in his eyes. "The young master would want no less," he finished softly.

Barbara nodded, managing a smile through the unbidden tears that fell. "That's Dick, alright," she agreed softly, her gaze looking down the hall towards where the love of her life lay. "I think that's why he always believed in living his life to the max." She sniffled and rubbed her cheek, her sad smile turning wistful. "He told me once he was glad his parents' death was quick, that they didn't linger between death and life. He wouldn't..." she swallowed hard, forced the words out, "wouldn't want this anymore than _we_ want to face it."

"So when can we see him?" interrupted Garth, speaking up before he could lose his own control after Barbara's words. "To say goodbye?"

"I'm afraid you can't, dear Garth," Alfred replied gently. "Bruce...is with him now. We have to give them the time they need."

"You mean to tell me," Roy began stonily, hands clenching into angry fists but his voice eerily tight and controlled, "that not only do the docs want to do something they have no _right_ to ask us to do, but now  Bruce is _monopolizing_ Dick!" He swore and slammed his fist onto the nearby table, but obviously wished he could've hit something more and that they weren't in a hospital. He _badly_ needed to thump something – and someone – big, black, and bat-shaped right now.

"Easy, Roy," Wally remonstrated, suddenly appearing by his friend and grabbing hold of the fists sent his way. "Lashing out ain't gonna help anything. Besides, what if it was Lian in there?"

Roy leaned into Wally's space and snarled harshly, "I don't think that really matters when—"

"Yes, Roy," Wally interrupted firmly. "It _does_ matter. What _if_ it was _Lian_ in there?" He tightened his grip on the hero's fists to emphasize his point. "Wouldn't you need time to say goodbye...to _allow_ your child to die?"

Roy stilled, the words finally hitting home. His eyes closed and a look of absolute pain flashed across his worn features. _Lian..._ She was his pride and joy, ever since she had entered his world. Nothing like the cold assassin that had borne her, his little girl was the center of his world and his heart. She was why he still fought the good fight as Arsenal, to make the world a better place, to ensure her future, to make sure she'd never need to fight the battles he'd fought with drugs. Her smile in the morning made his nightly battles worth every heartache, every risk he took and every injury he nursed.

But if he lost her...if he lost his girl, his angel...

He didn't know what he'd do. He couldn't comprehend it. He didn't _want_ to comprehend the pain, the loss, the despair he would feel. And it would only be worse still if he'd had to deliberately let her go. An accidental death, dying out in the field, even (perish the thought) as a vigilante...that he knew he could (somehow) cope with...and even kind of accept, in a twisted kind of way. But this...to "pull the plug" on his only daughter...to _allow_ her life to slip out of his fingers when every instinct in him was screaming at him to hold onto it tighter to protect his own flesh and blood...

His shoulders slumped and his body lost its tension as the father in him realized the painful truth, the awful truth that he'd never have the guts to do what Bruce was going to do.

Alfred spoke up behind them, his keen instincts telling him that it was now alright to continue the conversation. "Besides," the elderly man admitted sadly, "we've all seen him since he came here, even if we did not know it was to say goodbye."

"I know," Tim replied softly, casting a wary glance at where Roy still stood woodenly with his back to them all. "It still hurts, though," the young hero admitted quietly.

Roy swallowed and turned around, his face pale and ashen. "I don't like to say this, Tim, but he's right. Dick...is still Bruce's child, no matter how the big lug acts at times. He has the right to be there with Dick at the end." He mustered up a lopsided smile that didn't reach his eyes and admitted quietly, "And if it was Lian in there instead of Dick...even if I knew it was exactly what she wanted me to do...I'd want to be alone when I said goodbye."

Even knowing that this was exactly what Dick would've wanted them to do wasn't going to make it easier for Bruce...for any of them. But that was all they had to tell themselves in the cold of the night, when this was over, to soothe their consciences, when they missed Dick the most.

And, somehow, that would have to be enough.

* * *

The hours slipped by, and time marched onwards towards the end. Ever onwards, never stopping, never pausing, and always moving at the same damn pace. Maybe that was why Bruce Wayne no longer knew what the time was. Since he'd entered into this room, he found he'd lost track of the seconds, stopped counting the minutes...how long ago? Long enough that it was all blurring together. Morning, afternoon, night, it was all the same, and it all felt the same to him. It all felt...empty, anyway, without his...his _son_ to make him smile, to annoy him...and to simply be there because, for some strange, unfathomable reason, Dick loved him.

Fists clenched into fists by his side, and he had to stamp down the sudden urge to throttle someone. He'd already done that enough today – but that didn't mean he couldn't want to do it again and again and again until he got rid of this tension, of this ache in his chest that was probably because his heart had stopped beating yesterday – because it was still the day after it happened, wasn't it? – long before the news came to him through the official channels.

The grapevine had nothing, it seemed, over a father's intuition.

He'd known that something was _wrong_ , that someone or something had tilted his world and thrown his entire life out of kilter, long before the actual call came through. He hadn't accomplished anything for at least an hour prior to the call from the hospital, and he couldn't even plead a late lunch-break as the cause, because he vaguely recalled having eaten a few hours earlier. He also recalled after a fashion that he'd been avidly working on some takeover deal that had the potential to double WayneTech profits yet again, something Lucius claimed would be 'the deal of the century' if he ever managed to pull it off...but now...

Now, nothing like that mattered. He was fairly sure he wouldn't care if the entire country slid into a recession the world had never before seen that caused him to lose every business and every possession and every coin he had ever inherited or acquired in his long life. Not when his heart hadn't started beating yet, when his entire life was lying on this hospital bed in front of him waiting...waiting for him to make the impossible decision.

_Don't ask me to make this choice,_ he heard himself in his head, begging someone or something to spare him from this torment. _Don't ask me to choose._

_Because I can't._

He couldn't choose. Not when the life Dick had right now was so close to death anyway. Not when there was a still chance in his mind that Dick might soon awaken, that he'd open those clear, expressive eyes and ask what the hell was Bruce doing to look like he did. Not when there was still a glimmer of hope, even if it only seemed to be in his mind.

He couldn't choose.

None of his plans, none of his meticulously-plotted out designs on the future, ever included something like this. He had reason to curse that now, now that he was faced with the incomprehensible and found it to be just as confusing as he'd feared.

Then again, it wasn't like he exactly got an instruction book on letting go of his kid when parenthood came upon him. _Hell, Dick didn't come with an instruction book, period._ That was probably why he made such a mess of raising the kid. And all his mistakes, all his errors and fumblings, culminated in this moment, in this interminable, damnable wait.

Because the waiting was always the hard part.

But what was he waiting for? What kept him here, at the foot of the bed, staring at the unmoving body of his...of his _son_ , looking so fragile and vulnerable hooked up to so many machines and IVs? What kept the hours slipping through the fingers of his consciousness? Why did he feel as if moving or diverting his focus for even a second meant he would miss that crucial something that would make all the difference in the world?

He didn't know. He didn't know the answers, and he didn't know how to handle that.

Bruce Wayne, and even his alter ego called Batman, knew how to handle tension, anxiousness, and despair, for these were things he faced every night when he pulled on the mask and cowl... Or maybe it was when he took the Wayne mask off? He mentally shrugged and decided the order didn't really matter. Either way, he knew how to handle stress.

As a matter of fact, he already _had_ handled it, and that was why he was so late getting back after his "discussion" with the Blüdhaven doctors. That was also why certain cops would soon be finding a blubbering heap called Diablo in his hospital room who'd be suddenly more than willing to confess...to everything, even to things the police had known nothing about. He smirked at the thought, knowing that the Blüdhaven PD wouldn't know what had hit them with the goldmine that would be dumped in their laps.

Still, he wished he could've punched out Diablo's lights like he'd wanted to do since the moment the phone call came for Dick's next-of-kin, wished he could've exorcised some of this tense ache in his chest. He'd come very close to the point of no return as he'd stood there in the hospital room, staring down at the cause of it all. The only thing that had kept him back was the memory of a certain set of clear blue eyes, staring at him in disappointment. So he'd made sure he hadn't left any bruises that couldn't be explained...as well as using a few more "inventive" methods of getting what he wanted while leaving behind a minimum of debris.

So couldn't waiting be that simple? Why couldn't he just hit something and stop this awful suspension of time? Why did he hate waiting so badly?

He knew the answer to that too, at least intellectually. If he was waiting, he had no easy targets, nothing at which he could strike back and somehow vent the frustrated turmoil within him. His only enemy was Time, the nameless and undefinable entity that only a few had been able to conquer with time travel...and he'd read their stories and had even seen the dire consequences of that too many times to even consider trying it himself...no matter how much he wanted to. The events he privately referred to as the Crisis had been a case in point, as that was when multiple alternate dimensions had joined into one. The chaos that had created was indelibly seared into his memories – and his nightmares.

It was ironic, really. He was the only one that seemed to remember Crisis, and he couldn't get himself to forget it no matter how hard he tried.

This earth, this reality, had been the one left standing when all the cosmic dust settled, and he sometimes wondered if they'd be better off if things had happened slightly differently, if another path had been chosen. Certainly it might've turned out better for Dick, his son in all ways that he knew – except in voice, and having never really told Dick what he felt was now weighing heavily on him. Especially now. Would his son still be lying there, looking so vulnerable and fragile on the hospital bed, if he'd done things just a little differently? If he'd admitted his emotions instead of pushing them – and Dick – away for so long? If he'd given Dick more time to adjust after his parents' death before giving him the Robin mantle...or maybe even not allowing Dick to become Robin at all? But wouldn't that be depriving his son of something that completed him, that made Dick whole? And wouldn't it be like playing God, as he'd sworn never to do after seeing—

Bruce growled at himself and pushed the questions and doubts away, rubbing wearily at the bridge of his nose. He could feel a monster headache coming on from all this philosophical thinking, and _that_ had to be why he so hated waiting. It made him think about all kinds of things that he normally would simply accept and move on from, things he'd never normally stop to think about. It gave him and his mind too much time, too much free reign in which to run amok. And that, as he'd learned so often in the past, was never a really good idea because it invariably led to him questioning his beliefs.

But maybe that was the reason he was still here. He believed.

Yes, he believed...but in what?

The answer to that one came to him immediately: He believed in Dick, and that was really all that mattered. He believed because he knew Dick Grayson and he knew the man he had raised his son to be. _Or rather,_ he amended with a flash of bitterness, _I know the man he became despite my bungling and interference._ Despite his clumsy and fumbling attempts at parenthood, his son had indeed turned out to be a fine man, a man any father would be proud to call his own. Oh, how he was proud of him, so much so that at times he felt sure his chest would burst apart at the pressure of his pride in his son, in the personality that light up his life and most of all in Dick's unflagging spirit. His Dick had never been one to give up without a fight, or at least not without a grin and a bad joke to cover up his surrender. He knew that – and he knew it through and through, bones to bones.

Which was why he needed to do something other than this damn waiting for something to happen. Yet exactly _what_ was supposed to happen he wasn't quite certain, but he knew he was waiting, and he knew that what he was waiting for would come. It had to, even if he was the only one that seemed able to believe it. It was coming. He believed in that too.

"Fight it Dick, dammit."

He paused a moment and froze. Did that really just come from him? But it had to, it was the only logical answer, unless the walls had suddenly developed a voice. He was, after all, the only one left in the room. He'd chased everyone out hours ago on the excuse of needing some private time, on doctors' orders to start saying his goodbyes...and yet he'd found himself waiting instead, grimly holding onto his hops and his beliefs despite all that they had told him.

He found himself walking round the bed to stroke his hand gently down the stubble-covered jaw he knew so well. "You hear that, Dick?" he heard himself whisper. "The doctors have given up hope."

Hnh. He was speaking again, albeit softly and with an edge in his voice that betrayed more of his emotions than he liked. Revealing his emotions was exposing himself to vulnerability, but he gave a mental shrug and decided to allow it to continue. It couldn't harm anyone if he spoke without thinking about his words. He was alone, and he doubted Dick could hear him anyway. Besides, it was either speak his mind or go back to silently losing his mind as he waited, and having done that so recently he wasn't about to do it again.

"They don't think you'll wake up again...that it took too long for the paramedics to come and get you breathing again." Pause. Breathe. "They think you went too long without air for you to be _Dick_ again even if you  did wake up."

He paused and looked up, a thought coming to him. "And if I find that's the case," he added, his voice darkening as the Bat in him promised, "I'll make sure that everyone in that damn PD gets a few first aid lessons _the hard way_."

Bruce abruptly sighed and ran a hand through his dark hair. "But that's for later, I suppose," he continued in his normal voice, "and only if you prove me wrong." A beat. "Which you better not."

He blinked and looked away, letting his hand drop from Dick's cheek as he wondered why his eyes were stinging so badly. _Forget it. Just keep talking. Get this off your chest once and for all, Wayne_ , he berated himself, too wrapped up in his thoughts to note the small change in pattern in the ECG. And even if he had seen it, he probably would've just kept talking anyway to ease these final few moments, in the hope that Dick would somehow hear these words he had always meant to say in life.

"You hear that?" he admitted gruffly, head still turned away and staring out to the side at nothing. "Your old man believes in you, even if he usually has a hard time admitting it." Finally composing himself, he turned back to the bed, sparing only a glance at the monitors to find that the readouts were apparently the same as before. He promptly paid them no heed, instead allowing a suspicious brightness to glisten in his steely-blue eyes as he kept talking softly, " _I believe_ in  you...because I know you, I know...my son. I know the stock you came from, not just in blood and in genes, but in spirit.

He blinked again, now to clear his strangely blurring vision. "You're a fighter, Dick," he continued fiercely, firmly, not letting himself think otherwise. "You're a fighter, not a quitter, and you're certainly not a coward. No son of mine was ever going to be a coward," he spat, the mention of the word distasteful on his lips and incomprehensible to his spirit.

He laughed then, laughed the small, hoarse laugh of the grieving. "Hell, I've seen you face down villains and monsters that were your double size and three times your strength, and you walked away in one piece with that infuriating grin intact _every single damn time_... So why can't you smile now, dammit?" His hands were clenched into fists so hard that his knuckles were beyond white, but that too he ignored. "'Cause it's ironic," he continued bitterly, "that you faced and conquered every thing else in your life to be taken down by some _two bit hood_." That, too, was incomprehensible.

Because Bruce knew why neither of them were smiling, why he was struggling and grappling with this impossible choice. That was why his cheeks were wet even through the anger burning bright within him. He hated saying goodbye.

And then he abruptly seemed to deflate, shoulders slumping and his posture slackening. He turned away from the bed again, needing the visual distance to let the tears go. "Dammit Dick," he mumbled hoarsely, "you've got me _crying_ again." Every time he'd allowed the tears to fall like this, he'd been crying over losing those he considered family – his parents, Jason, and even Tim when he'd thought the boy was lost to the Clench plague – and each time he'd promised himself he'd never cry again.

That was another promise he'd broken. He seemed to be doing that a lot lately, breaking promises.

"You know," he finally admitted softly as his voice grew increasingly gruff, "I once promised you that I'd do my best to keep you safe, that I'd never deliberately put you in front of a danger I thought you might not be able to handle. And somehow I think I broke that promise every night I let Robin out...and then you started breaking it all on your own. After that, after I fired you, this time I swore to myself that I'd always find a way to show that I still believed in you, that I'd never let you down again." He swallowed past the lump in his throat. "And now they're all telling me that I have to—that I have to let—"

He broke himself off and clenched his fists tighter still, the anger inside tipping the balance once again. "But I'm _not_ giving up on you, Dick," he swore fiercely. "I _can't_." He knew that now, too. And all of a sudden he was furious, blazingly furious, with himself more than anything, and suddenly snapped: "So work with me Dick!" He was almost shouting now. "And for pity's sake, _stop being such a damn coward!_ "

He whirled around and strode for the door, his footsteps clipped and angry. A small part of his mind wondered fleetingly if the anger was at Dick for still being unconscious or at himself for running again. _Some role model you are, Wayne. Always running from the pain._ And then he pushed the thought away, shoved away with all his strength and flung it into the nether regions of his mind with a mental roar of frustration. That, at least, he could strike back at...and that was also why he was going to tell the doctors what he thought. He wasn't going to give them the okay they wanted to turn the machines off, but to tell them what he really thought of them and their opinions, and then where to shove it and precisely how many times to fold it to make it all fit! By the time he'd get through with them, they'll—

_–bip–_

Bruce froze in mid-stride, hand floating just above the doorknob. _Was that...Did I hear that right?_ His hand dropped to his side and he turned around slowly, feeling as if he was moving through thick syrup. His heart was pounded in his throat and he hardly dared to breathe in case it happened again and he missed it, missed that flutter that might well herald the final end of his world. He walked on noiseless, silent feet back to the foot of the bed and resumed his previous stance once more...and simply waited.

* * *

Alfred had left the others talking quietly in the waiting area of the hospital some hours ago, utilising his age-old skills of blending into the background to help him get away. He'd drifted down the hall somewhat, technically still in the waiting area but now able to see precisely what happened in the hall outside Dick's room, awaiting the right moment to go and talk to the Master.

The sun moved up and across the sky, and he waited. Past noon, past the lunchtime crowds and the flurry of activities of the day, and still he waited. Now it was getting late, getting darker again, and the activity levels were quickly slowing as the sun touched the horizon, and Alfred still waited for that precise moment to—

_Now!_ his instincts suddenly told him, but he'd barely moved two steps before he suddenly stopped and moved back to the wall. He'd seen Leslie Thompkins coming down the hallway and slipping inside Dick's room, and he knew that the kind Doctor was going to say goodbye in her own way, perhaps even talk to Bruce about the decision. And if he could trust those in his care with anyone, it was Leslie. That was, after all, one of the reasons (although there were many more) why he and the good lady doctor got along so well.

That was why he decided to wait. When Leslie was done, he would see Bruce – and Dick – himself for that final time.

He was still standing in the hall when Leslie suddenly came rushing out, a strange look on her face he couldn't decipher – and didn't really want to understand, truth be told. Alfred took an involuntary half-step forward, heart pounding in his chest, reaching out and mouthing Leslie's name to ask her what had happened, but no sound came out of his tortured throat and his hands clenched only air. Leslie had never been one to rush about. She was always calm and methodical as a doctor, except...except when patients were already too close to death for calmness to have any soothing effect...

Right on cue, as if summoned by his horrifying thought, Leslie came rushing back with two people, one of which he recognized as a doctor from earlier in the day and the other dressed as a nurse. It confirmed all his worst fears when all three rushed back into Dick's room, and he heard them calling out to other for a few moments until the door shut itself behind them. After all these years of caring and healing his family after the inevitable long, dangerous nights, he knew too much medical jargon to not understand the frantic conversation. _Dear heart...it's time. It's time. We're finally losing him..._

Heart numbed and his mind dazed, unaware of the sudden silence in the waiting room as the others turned and watched him, his feet took him to the door of Dick's private room, and his hand held the door open enough for him to see inside. And then he could only stand and watch anxiously, free hand pressed over his mouth to hold back his grief as much as it was to hold back his voice, telling himself it was lest he cause a distraction as events unfolded inside.

All he could do was watch, and wait for his world to end.


	8. The Greatest Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's over. It's finally over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh. Yeah. Its Friday somewhere right?  
> And the usual thanks to the betas.

Bruce had still been standing at the end of the bed, waiting, when Dr Leslie Thompkins – the Wayne family doctor from before Bruce's birth, and one of the few people in the world that could change Bruce's mind when it was made up – stuck her head around the door. The tear tracks were still fresh on her face; she, too, had come to say her farewells. "Bruce!" she exclaimed in surprise as she came fully inside to stand beside him, never expecting him to still be here. "You're still—"

"Shh!" he half-turned to her and hissed. "Listen!"

"But Bruce—" she tried again, the note of a sigh in her voice.

" _Listen!_ " His tone, though a whisper, allowed for no arguments. It was an order of the Bat.

Raising only one eyebrow to show her surprise at being spoken to in that way, Leslie nevertheless listened...for what, she had no idea. All she knew was that it had to be very serious for Bruce to break her single cardinal rule she had with him: that the Bat should never speak to Leslie when he should be Bruce Wayne. And given the stress he'd been under the last few days, she reluctantly decided to let it be long enough to see what was so important.

So the two of them stood there in the silent hospital room, two frozen puppets waiting for someone or something to pull their strings.

The silence stretched.

Finally, unable to take it any longer, Leslie spoke again. "Bruce, I _really_ don't appreciate you—" And then she broke off again, but voluntarily this time.

— _Beeeep—_

She looked at Bruce. He looked at Leslie.

"Did you—?"

"Was that—?"

They broke off together and stared at each other.

Leslie was the first to speak. "Wait here, Bruce. I'll get the doctors!" And so she rushed outside, moving faster than she probably had in years, leaving Bruce behind...to wait. Again.

But this time, he knew what was happening.

* * *

_Drifting._

_Numb._

_Grey._

_The greyness is back. That's good. It went away for a while, left him behind to suffer without. Didn't like that, didn't want the things that came to him. Knows it's better to stay where its grey. Sheltered. Protected._

_Drifting._

_And it comes again; the Noise is back. Feels it, can't see it; never there when he looks. It'll be like that again this time, he knows. So ignore it. Just leave it be, don't worry. It's already been there for a while; it'll be there later. Can't concentrate on it, because that makes the grey leave. That's what happened last time. Can't lose that. Mustn't lose that._

_But he's already lost. Its gone, and it won't come back. Not this time. His thinking made it go. It won't answer his calls. Why not? He called it back last time; why not now? Maybe concentrate on sinking back down, back to silence and peace. Maybe that will work._

_It doesn't._

_Blocked. It's blocking him...or is he somehow blocking it? Whatever. It won't come._

_He doesn't panic; he doesn't know how. Not yet. But he knows how to struggle. He can do that. He fights it, fights what pulls him to the waiting pain. Even here he knows pain, knows it well, enough to know he doesn't want it. Felt so much already; no point in adding more. Make it go away._

_But struggling makes it worse. The more he fights, the more he loses, the more his peace recedes. And that's wrong; fighting should make him win. It's worked before, he knows that, because he also knows he's fought it before. How, where, or why, he doesn't know, but he knows he's fought and won._

_Losing. Not supposed to lose._

_And the noise comes again, breaking focus, losing grip. This time he can make out a word:_

"...fighter..."

_Yes, that's what he is. The rush of joy in him tells him he agrees. He's a fighter. Redouble his efforts, can't loose now. Focus harder! Fight!_

"...coward..."

_What! Coward? Rebellion: he's no coward. Not a quitter, he never runs. Never!_

_Redouble the efforts. Strain at it. Prove it. He'll show them. And it works. He slowly sinks again, grabbing hold of regained peace. Keeps a tight hold of it too; not gonna lose it now. Not willingly. Now has to drift again, relax and be numb._

_But he can't. Have to let go first, let go his peace. Can't do that either. So stay, keep his peace, keep his hold. Ignore the part that pulls away. It's not what matters. The hold does. Hold is everything. Stay like this. As long as there's peace, he can fly anywhere, soaring endlessly on clouds..._

_...only to fall. Always falling. What is it now?_

_The noise. Again! He can hear it, clearer than before. He can hear the voice behind the words. Promises. Something about promises and breaking them. Against his will, he's curious. Listens to the pain, the sorrow, the fear; an unusual mix. Instincts tell him it's someone he knows, someone he trusts._

_So wait, not drawing near nor sinking down. Waiting for it to come again. Knowing it will. It always does._

"...Dammit Dick!"

_Dick?_

_Is that who is he is?_

_The instincts tell him yes. He's Dick; that's him. He has a name. Names are good. Aren't they?_

"...stop being such a damn coward!"

_Again he rebels. Not a coward; never were, never will. How could The Caller think that? Someone He Knows should also know better. Not a coward! The anger pushes him forward, forgetting the consequences, forgetting the pain..._

* * *

The doctors' conversation and frantic calls swirled around Bruce Wayne, but he paid it no heed. He ignored it completely and stayed where he was, a steady rock in the heaving ocean of movement. The doctors just had to work around him, because he wasn't moving one inch for anything...for anything but this.

This moment, this grip, was all that mattered to Bruce. It was really the only thing he was aware of. The way his fingers curled around the object in hands, maintaining a steady, gentle pressure. Not to heavy, not tight enough to break bones, but not to light either, nor so feather-light that he didn't feel it.

Because feeling was important right now. It was the only way to make the reaction he sensed real and tangible. He wasn't imagining it.

* * *

...Consciousness, when it finally came to me, came back as a flood.

I was drowning. I was drowning in an imaginary sea, a sea of darkness and pain, and there was nothing here to save me. Wave after wave crashed over me, swamping me with their power and the sheer mass of them. I felt myself go under again, felt the world darken and swallow me down.

_'Dick! Hang on for me!'_

The voice that called my name told me to hang on. I tried to, striking out blindly, thrashing in the water and struggling to find something to hold on to. I couldn't find it, couldn't find that thing that I needed. And I saw the surface above me, saw the light reflecting off the water, and knew that was where I needed to be. But nothing I did seemed to have any effect. Hell, if they wanted me to hang on, they should at least give me something to help me!

I looked up, straining for one last glimpse of the surface before it would disappear. I saw it, distant and far away and getting further, and knew it was too far. It was over...

* * *

Because this had to be real. It had to be. Bruce knew he hadn't imagined the gentle return pressure on his hand, the gentle squeeze that made him feel like the sun was coming out from behind the clouds, like the heavens had righted themselves, like the pure smell of clean air after a thuderstorm. Catastrophe averted. Disaster avoided. He was safe. It was going to be okay. Smiling giddily, Bruce gave the hand he held another gentle squeeze, just to feel the response.

Nothing.

The hand was suddenly limp.

And then the heart monitor faltered and flat-lined.

* * *

...I struggled instinctively, suddenly afraid of being consumed and swallowed up by the pain that held me fast.

_'Hold him, dammit!'_

And something ensared my feet, held it tightly within its grip. It was holding me still, stopping me from getting to the surface. It was dragging me back down into the darkness, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

I just struggled harder, determined to escape...

* * *

— _B-Be-Be-bep-Be—_

Dick's heart was beating again. Fainter, weaker than it should, but it was beating.

But he was still convulsing, still thrashing, albeit weakly. Now it wasn't just the shock of how they'd had to get him started again. It was something more, had to be something worse. And it was all hands on deck as they quickly moved to hold him down, to prevent him hurting himself even more despite his weakened state.

Somehow, Bruce never let go of the hand the entire time. And through it all, Dick was still so silent. Not awake enough to know what was happening and speak, too far under to stop it. But his eyes were suddenly moving rapidly under his closed lids as the thrashing continued.

* * *

...Then I saw the hand, the hand of my salvation breaking the surface and plunging down to the depths towards me. If I could reach it. I struggled harder, flailed my limbs and struck the water with all my strength. Had to...reach it! The hand, and all it offered, consumed my thoughts. I struck out blindly with my feet, smashing my free foot against whatever held me down while straining upwards with my arms.

_'Come on, son. You can do it!'_

I felt myself gasp aloud as I finally broke free and shot towards the hand, grasping hold and allowing it to pull me back, back to the surface...back to the pain...

* * *

Dick suddenly stilled, falling back limply onto the bed as a breathy moan slipped past the tape holding the ventilator tube inside his mouth. The team of four that had restrained him – the Blüdhaven doctor and nurse had held his legs, while Leslie and Bruce had had an arm each – paused as one, heaving a collective sigh of relief as they tentatively released their grip on his limbs.

The medical team exchanged a measured glance, mixing consternation and relief. That was close. Too close. And they had no idea what had caused it. Out of the three, Leslie was the only one of them who had a suspicion, but it was one she couldn't quite bring herself to hope in. Not yet.

Bruce just stood there, breathing heavily and almost too focused on his son to notice that his hand was still gripping flesh. Because of that, he was the first to notice the fluttering eyelids.

"He's waking up!"

* * *

...Pain.

It was everywhere.

My entire body felt like one big bruise, and parts of me felt like those bruises had been punched six ways to Sunday. I tried immediately to roll away, instincts telling me that movement would get me away from the pain. I didn't get far. Something pressed down on my shoulders, holding me in place but sending spikes of pain through my body to join with the agonizing pain coming from my chest and arms and legs. I groaned, or tried to, but only guttural moans came out past something in my throat that blocked all sound I made. I gagged, trying to breathe around the obstruction.

There were voices in the distance, frantic voices, but I couldn't focus on them to hear anything through the almighty rushing in my ears and the pain that was quickly consuming everything I had. That was when I felt the warmth suddenly rush into my veins and flow deeply under my flesh. _Drugs._ I felt myself twitch spasmodically until the warmth reached my chest and then my limbs, finally taking the edge off the pain that had stolen my thoughts.

But I still couldn't breathe around the obstruction in my throat.

Suddenly frantic, I opened my mouth and tried to speak, to tell them I needed air and to ask what the hell was happening. Again, nothing more than guttural sounds came out. Now I really started panicking. I couldn't breathe and I had no way to tell anyone—

"It's okay, Dick honey," a female's voice suddenly crooned somewhere above me. I knew her, even if I couldn't quite place her. "You're on a ventilator to help your lungs breathe. Don't fight it Dick, just relax and let it help you."

_Damn machine._ I obediently tried to relax, tried to stop fighting for breath, striving to obey even if I couldn't seem to remember who the woman was nor why she was so familiar.

"That's it, hon," she continued soothingly. "Just relax and let the machine breathe for you." I forced myself to keep still, concentrating as best I could on trying _not_ to breathe. It was hard. The drugs were already making it hard to think, to focus.

At long last I felt my lungs expand then contract as air was forced in and out, finally allowing me to relax into the soft warmth spreading throughout my body. _Ohhh...that feels good..._

"Now open your eyes for me, Dick," she instructed in the same soft, soothing tone. "Let me look at them pretty blue eyes of yours."

It took almost all my strength to pry my eyes open a crack, and when I did everything was a bright blur. I closed them again with a breathy moan escaping my lips. _Too bright...waaay too bright._

I heard the woman address someone else, her voice turning away from me, but paid no attention to the words. It was easier just to lie where I was and relax, the pain feeling increasingly distant and detached from me as the machine continued to breathe for me. _Must be good drugs,_ I thought to myself hazily, already feeling the meds calling me down into darkness.

A hand was placed my forehead, smoothing down my hair, relaxing me even further. "Dick, hon? You still with us?"

I nodded slightly and made another moan, unable to find the strength to open my eyes again. Man, was I tired. _Sleep would be so nice about now..._

The hand continued stroking. "Don't fight the painkillers, hon. Save your strength. We'll be right here when you wake up, okay?"

I nodded slightly again, or at least I think I did, as I relaxed further under the soothing ministrations. It wasn't long before I was again spiraling down into oblivion...

* * *

It was only once Dick's heart rate was once again slow and steady, indicating he was well and truly under sedation, that Dr Leslie Thompkins removed her hand from his forehead and breathed a sigh of relief. _That was close. Way too close._ She looked up and across the bed to Bruce Wayne, who had a similar expression of mixed relief and strain on his face. He, too, knew how close they had come to losing him. Their eyes met across the bed.

"He'll be fine now, Bruce," she told him softly. "Especially now that he's got some meds in his system. We just have to let him sleep it off."

He nodded to show her he'd understood, but the strain and weariness didn't leave his face. He rubbed his tired features with one hand, the other hand still clasped around Dick's good hand. He'd grabbed hold of it at some point, he wasn't quite sure when. That was how he'd known Dick was coming back to them, when the grip had tightened from limp to gentle...and that grip suddenly going limp was also how he'd known before the monitors flat-lined that they'd been losing him.

It was the pain, Bruce knew, that had been the culprit. The doctors had been unable to give Dick any painkillers until after he woke up. It was the same reason for why doctors were always careful about giving pain meds to people with concussions – the risk of increasing the damage to the brain was just too great. But the problem was that Dick would've spent so much of his strength struggling to wake up that he'd had nothing left to fight the pain of multiple injuries. That was why they'd almost lost him...again.

But it was okay now. Dick had woken up, if only for a few seconds, and Leslie had given a small dose of the 'good stuff' for the pain he had to be in. And although he was sleeping again, at least it wasn't a coma. This time he knew for certain that his son would wake up again. He was going to be okay now.

"Bruce?"

He looked up, startled out of his thoughts, to find that it was just him, Leslie, and Alfred in the room – although the doorway was another matter. She must've dismissed the other two medical staff while he'd been immersed in his thoughts, and Alfred...was Alfred. Of course he was here. And of course the other members of their...'family' were gathered at the door, peering over one another's shoulder and watching.

Leslie smiled at him, allowing her relief and her affection for all of them to show now that the danger had passed... _and_ they were relatively alone and she had her back to the door. "He'll be fine," she repeated softly.

"I know," he replied quietly, then looked down at the hand he had yet to let go. "I'm still staying until he wakes up again."

"Bruce—"

"No, Leslie," he answered firmly to her interrupted objection. He looked up and met her gaze, his eyes clear and firm. "I almost— No. I'm staying." He pulled up a chair and sat down, deliberately focusing his gaze on Dick and watching how peacefully he slept.

"Okay, fine," Leslie sighed, knowing better then to argue. At the moment, she knew she'd have more success using a single toothpick to move the entire Great Wall of China. "But you have to promise that you'll call the doctors as soon as his vitals show he's waking up again, _and_ that you still take care of yourself. I don't want you falling flat on your face from exhaustion. Understand?"

He nodded, also knowing better than to argue but relieved she'd still let him stay despite her unspoken objections. "Thanks, Leslie." He met her gaze for a quick moment before dropping his eyes back to his son's face. "I really appreciate this."

"...No problem," she answered, taken slightly off-guard to get a thank-you so quickly. "I'll go get someone in here to see about taking him off the ventilator."

Bruce just grunted in reply and barely noticed when Leslie and Alfred turned to speak to the rest of Dick's family and get that medical attention, his entire being already fully focused on his sleeping son and the hand he still held.

* * *

The next time I remember waking, though I'm not sure how much later that was, the room was silent...except for the machines. I could hear the steady _beep-beep_ of the machines long before I was aware enough to consider opening my eyes. And when I was aware enough to consider doing just that, I didn't. I drifted instead on the edge of the haze of drug-induced slumber, aware enough to know I was almost awake but not really aware enough to go any further. Actually that was probably a good thing, since I already knew I was lying on a hospital bed: the smell of antiseptic was a major tip-off. I didn't often end up in hospital, but when I did it was usually because of something major.

That still didn't explain the dead weight that trapped my right arm.

I thought about that for a while without really thinking, trying to rationalize about what could be causing that weight while my brain still felt like it was wrapped up in over ten layers of cotton-wool. In the end I realized I'd have to wake up more if I wanted to see what it was. Which meant I had to open my eyes.

That took me a while. It felt like I had a ten tonne weight on each lid, and it took most of my strength just to open them to a small crack and hold them there. I blinked a few times at the blurry room and patiently waited for my vision to settle down.

The first thing I could focus on was the wall. Flat, featureless, not quite white but not quite colored either. _Taupe..._ Beside it, to the left, a window, with curtains pulled open and a blind that was letting in far too much light. Wincing, I slowly turned my head away from that and squinted down at my hand with the weight on it.

_Bruce..._ He'd fallen asleep on my arm, my hand still held tightly in his. I let out a small sigh and relaxed back into the pillow, trying hard not to make a move that might wake him. He looked so exhausted that I wanted him to sleep longer, especially since he looked like he'd been awake for over four days on two hours worth of sleep.

It didn't work. He was already stirring before my head was back on the pillow. He raised his head, yawned and blinked the sleep out of his eyes, then looked up at me.

I gave him a lazy I'm-drugged-to-the-gills smile. "Hey," I whispered then grimaced, my sore and raspy throat telling me exactly what it thought about me speaking.

"Dick," he whispered back, bestowing that half-smile of his on me as he gave my hand a gentle squeeze. There was alsoi something I couldn't focus my vision enough to identify shining in his eyes. "Do you want a drink?"

"Mmm," I nodded gratefully. He reached over me and did something to my left, out of my field of view. He came back after a few moments with a tumbler of something and a spoon. I gave it a curious look, wondering idly what on earth he was planning. My question was answered when he spooned a teaspoon full of ice chips into my mouth. I managed to get down two small mouthfuls to relieve my throat before he took the tumbler away and placed it on the bedside table.

"How you feeling?"

Shooting the ice chips a regretful look, I had to think about that through the fog in my brain. "Mmm 'kay...I t'ink." I murmured softly; my throat was still sore but not as much as before. Speaking of which... "T'roat?"

Another hand squeeze. "They had you on a ventilator for your lungs. That's why your throat's so sore."

"Oh." That made sense, I guess, once it trickled down to me through the cotton wool in my head. "...Drugs?"

He nodded and his lips twitched faintly. "The good stuff, as Leslie calls it."

Bruce suddenly stood and turned around as the door behind him opened. I slowly turned my head and looked over there, but didn't recognise the man standing in the doorway.

The newcomer came over and stood by the bed opposite Bruce, flicking through the papers in his hands for a moment before looking up and meeting my gaze. "Ah, Dick, you're awake. I'm Doctor Noah Callahan, I've been taking care of your case. How are you feeling?"

I blinked. Why all the sudden concern with me? Bruce was the one that looked like he'd twice in the one day been to hell and back. I gave him the same answer I'd given Bruce, then slowly asked a question of my own: "Wha'...happ'n'd?"

"Can you remember anything?" the Doc asked.

Again, I had to think about that through the cotton-wool in my head. What came back was disjointed images I could barely make sense of. "Sorta... Somet'n' 'bout...a car...an'...chasin' someone?" My brow furrowed as I struggled to understand the images and feelings that were coming at me. "An'...not bein' able t' breathe." I shot a look at Bruce, wondering why it was so hard to remember. The difficulty in speaking coherently I just put down to the drugs – it was a side-effect that seemed familiar, at least.

The Doc made a note on the papers in his hands. "That's probably just a side-effect of the drugs, Mr. Grayson," he told me as if he'd read my mind. "You'll probably remember more after they've worn off. Do you feel any pain anywhere?"

I shook my head slightly. "No' really... Th' drugs...workin'... So wha's wrong?"

Callahan put the papers down and sat on the bed. "You were shot, Mr. Grayson," he told me without preamble. "Three times: a graze along your left shoulder, a bullet in your right thigh, and another where your left lung should've been. The lung wound actually didn't do as much damage as it should've done because your lung had already collapsed. That's why you'd remember not being able to breathe."

"Oh." That also explained the distant pain I was feeling. "Why'd...th' lung...?" I struggled to ask.

"Why did your lung collapse?" he elaborated for me.

I nodded slightly, relieved I'd been understood.

"Diablo Simmons, the guy you were chasing, apparently hammered you in the ribs and cracked a few of them for you while you were apprehending him. Witnesses tell me you later tackled him, and that was probably what caused a rib to puncture your left lung. Air escaped through the hole in your lung and was trapped in the lung cavity, and the pressure eventually causing your lung to collapse."

I nodded again, a trickle of amazement drifting down through my hazy thoughts that something that painful could be made to sound so simple.

"Also," he continued, "you're going to need extensive physical therapy on your leg to help you rebuild all the damaged tissues. The bullet did a lot of damage because it didn't exit and it probably nicked the femur as well. It might even require surgery if the bullet damaged some ligaments or tendons, but at this point I want to focus on those lungs and making sure you don't get an infection over the next few days. Follow me so far?"

Another nod. To be honest, I wasn't really following everything he was saying, but I could follow enough to get the general drift: I'd _really_ messed myself up this time.

"As for your left hand," Callahan continued, flicking over a few pages on my chart, "we've splinted the broken bones and put it in a cast as tightly as we could manage. You won't need surgery if the bones heal correctly _and_ you keep that arm in a sling practically 24/7, preferably for as long as six weeks. Your leg probably won't be up to you walking on it until about that point in time anyway."

_Six weeks..._ I looked down at my left hand and suddenly realised that I was indeed feeling quite a bit of pain from it, all things considered. It was actually covered in so much fiberglass that it seemed to me that it looked less like a hand and more like a dark-blue ball at the end of my arm. _Ouch. That's really gonna hurt when the meds wear off..._

Then the haze cleared enough that I suddenly registered the name he'd said a few moments ago and I flicked my gaze back to the doctor. "D'ablo...?"

"Diablo Simmons," Callahan explained. "He's the guy that shot you. After you arrested him and your backup arrived, he managed to get out of his cuffs and steal the gun off another cop." A moment later, a laconic smile stole across the doctor's face. "Actually, he's confessed to everything and is currently 'resting' quite uncomfortably at the moment on another floor, under constant police guard." He stood and picked up his papers again. "Now Mr. Grayson, everything seems stable at the moment. Do you feel up to many visitors?"

I paused for a moment, thinking hard, then carefully shrugged the uninjured right shoulder. Too much cotton wool, that's the problem.

"Very well," he noted, making another mark on the chart, "I'll pass that on to the nurses. Now, I want you – or whoevers with you – to call me again when the pain becomes too much, and we'll see about giving you some relief, okay?"

I nodded numbly once more and watched as the doctor left. I relaxed then back into the pillow and allowed my eyes to close, suddenly tired again. All that talking had worn me out.

Bruce gave my hand another faint squeeze. "Go to sleep, Dick. We'll be here when you wake up."

"Mmm'hmm," I nodded. Feeling safe and secure despite the distant pain, I closed my eyes and allowed myself to sleep off the last of the painkillers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay tuned for an epilogue. :)


	9. All's Well

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A day in the recovery process, about 2 weeks in.  
> Or: working out frustrations and bundled up energy takes many forms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always much belated thanks to betas for getting this shipshape. All mistakes are mine, I _earned_ them.

  
In my opinion, there's nothing more boring than this.

"...and of all the crazy things to do with broken ribs, you don't..."

See, that's Leslie. I was just nodding along at the appropriate points and pretending that I was listening. This was always the first lecture I was on the receiving end of whenever I was injured. The specifics usually changed, but the meaning never did. This time it was rattling off the list of everything I shouldn't do with two broken ribs while she was actually telling me that I shouldn't have been so reckless and careless. I was actually surprised she'd waited this long to give it to me. That said, I can't quite see the connection between asking for help sleeping and me getting this lecture. Doctors.

"...and number _one_ , at the very _top_ of that list, is tackling someone _after_ sprinting over a hundred yards," she finished, more than a little exasperation in her voice. "Wasn't there _anything_ else you could've done?"

"Yeah," I grunted. "Could'a let him go and he'da shot someone else." I closed my eyes before I rolled them. _Like I'd ever let that happen._ I opened my eyes and shot her a plantative look. "But I'm better now, aren't I?" Except for the unusable leg and the not sleeping bits.

"Dick," she told me gently but firmly, "you had a collapsed lung as well as being shot three times. Besides what you did to your hand, you've also had to have surgery to rebuild your leg. You won't be ' _better_ ' for at least six more weeks, probably longer."

"Yeah Dick," Barbara piped up helpfully from the doorway of my room at the Manor, "you're lucky we were able to spring you from the Blüdhaven hospital at all."

I shot her a look that I knew was somewhere between aggravated she had to agree with the doctor and contrite because I could well remember the effort that had gone into getting me out. Just because I'd been mostly out of it on pain-meds at the time didn't mean I wasn't aware of all the tests they'd put me through in the two weeks I'd been there after I woke up. Even after all that, the sole reason I was out at all was because I was in the Manor and Leslie was spending the nights here. And there was always someone here to watch me and make sure I didn't do something I shouldn't – which right now was everything except relieving certain bodily functions, and even _that_ was under strict supervision. Sheesh.

The problem was that if I was going to get anywhere under my own power I'd need a cane or a set of crutches first...and either option involved using my left hand that was still in its fiberglass cast and more immobile than Alfred's apron strings. So that meant either using a wheelchair or being virtually carried by the nearest available person whenever I needed to go somewhere. That was why I wasn't in my apartment – there was no way they'd let me tackle those stairs by myself, and there was also no way I'd let someone (namely Bruce) carry me up them either. A guy's gotta have _some_ pride, especially when I _own_ the building – even if it is in secret.

"I know," I reluctantly admitted, picking absently at the bedspread that was already Alfred-guaranteed to be free of lint. "It's just..." I trailed off and turned my head to look out the window, as if I wasn't sure how to express exactly what I was feeling. Actually, the truth was that I'd learnt years ago to never tell Leslie when I was bored during my recovery from any injury. That always got me the second lengthy lecture that being bored was my just desserts for getting hurt and refusing to stop the nightlife-thing. Even though I'd been nowhere near the night-suit when this stuff happened to me, I was fairly sure that wouldn't stop Leslie giving me the lecture, and that was one lecture I could do without.

Of course, I was still so bored I was almost wishing for one of those damn Blüdhaven cases that "only you can solve, Dick," quote unquote. Even mediocre boredom was better than the full-on version. Hell, I'd even take a concussion right about now. At least then I'd be sleeping, which was better than staring at the ceiling, wide awake and energised enough to do run the full length the Manor's grounds – twice – but unable to do a thing about it.

Luckily for me, however, Leslie decided to take pity on me. She sat on the end of the bed and patted my good leg. "I know it's very frustrating for you, Dick, to be forced to rely on everyone else to get anywhere. But it's only been a few days since you got out of hospital. You can't expect miracles, especially not when we all came so close to losing you."

Frustrating? Oh yeah, and that wasn't the half of it. But I nodded anyway, putting on my best chastened look. "I know," I murmured, letting out a quiet sigh and closing my eyes. Just because I couldn't expect miracles and had probably overused my allowance of them lately didn't mean I wasn't going to hope for one anyway.

See, not only did Diablo's bullet nick the femur bone of my thigh, but later scans – after I woke up in hospital – showed that the bullet had also torn through some ligaments and damaged more than its share of muscles and tendons. Part of the reason why I'd spent so long in hospital was because when they found out I couldn't even bear the slightest weight on my injured leg, they'd had to put me on the surgical table a second time to do more repairs on the tissues in my leg, focusing mainly on the ligaments and tendons. As for rest of the damaged tissue, they would only heal in time and with careful use. But of course, my luck being what it is, I had only just started on the physical therapy, having been forced to wait until my broken ribs healed _and_ I'd recovered more from being shot in the chest. Not that I was fully over those two injuries, but I'd sent enough doctors and nurses up the wall since I woke up

Man Diablo, you and I are going to have words one day, if I ever get my hands on you...

Leslie's words suddenly broke into my thoughts and I realized I'd better switch my attention to her. "...so you don't have to worry about that." _Whoa._ Worry about  what? "So I bet you'll be pleased to know I got your test results yesterday."

That certainly pricked my ears and made me turn – my head, not my body – in her direction. "Yeah? What did they say?"

She sighed and shook her head, throwing her hands up in the air in a small display of exasperation. "What else? You're a walking miracle, as always. No brain damage on any of the scans, and I dare say you're certainly not showing signs of any damage."

I gave Leslie the best abashed smile I could manage. "That's me, a walking miracle. Of course, ask Alfred and he'll say I'm a walking disaster." I sobered then and gave her a thankful look. "Thanks for everything, Leslie. Couldn't have done it without ya."

She smiled back at me, beamed really. "You're welcome, Dick," she told me kindly as she gathered her things. "If only _all_ my patients had your manners. Now, if you keep healing at this rate, after your physical therapy today you might be able to go outside for a few minutes, but  only if you're in a chair and Bruce or Alfred pushes you."

_Mission accomplished!_ Yep, I'd pushed the right two buttons: Alfred and thanking her. "Thanks, Doc. You're the best," I grinned at her, too elated at the prospect of getting out of these four walls even if it meant again submitting to a wheelchair in addition to being fussed over by Bruce or Alfred. Feeling the sun again would be worth a little embarrassment – I hoped.

She chuckled and picked up her bag. "And don't you forget it, Dick. I'll check in on you tonight when I get back." She left then, stopping a moment to talk quietly to Barbara on her way out the door.

Ignoring the sound of the two main females in my life at the moment talking – and, knowing my luck, scheming against me – I tried to settle down in the bed against the pillows that were propping me up. The hardest part was finding a position that didn't strain my broken ribs, didn't pull on my damaged chest muscles, and wouldn't require me moving my leg. I couldn't help but grimace as I shifted uneasily, the meds Leslie had me on not quite enough to fully cover the spike of pain whenever I moved my leg. But it was either swallowing pills that weren't quite enough or taking stuff that would've made me so drowsy I'd never keep my eyes open for longer than five minutes, and I'd much rather be able to think clearly even it meant never being able to get fully comfortable.

I'd just found a new position when Barbara appeared by my side – which meant that Leslie was finally gone for the morning. "You okay?" she asked me in concern, reaching out to hold my good hand. Judging by the frown on her face, she'd probably seen my expression when I'd moved positions.

I nodded and favored her with a lazy smile while trying my darnedest to breathe normally. "Yeah, I'm fine, Babs," I replied, inwardly wincing at the faint tremble I could hear in my voice.

And of course Barbara knew me too well not to pick up on it. "Liar," she told me, but I could see the wry smile on her face and hear it in her voice. "Stubborn, headstrong liar."

_Caught out again, Grayson._ I felt myself wilt into the pillows propping me up as I allowed my eyes to close a moment now that I could stop trying to hide it. "Yeah, that's me," I breathed, grimacing as I grimly rode out the waves of pain. Finally, I managed to relax slightly when it slowly retreated to a more tolerable level.

There was silence a moment, and then I opened my eyes again when I heard her push on the brakes on her chair. "Babs, what...?"

"Shut up," she told me as she pushed herself up and out of the chair, "and just stay where you are."

That last bit, at least, I had no problem with. I had no intentions of moving my legs for at least another hour, preferably two, maybe even three if I could put off the physical therapist long enough. Shutting up...now that was another story. As anyone who knows me can tell you, 'shutting up' is not something that's usually in my vocabulary. "What are you...?"

"I said, ' _shut up_ ,' Hot Pants, so just sit back and enjoy it," she told me firmly after she'd swung herself onto the bed.

"Oh," I murmured, eyes widening as it finally penetrated what she wanted when she maneuvered her body to lay down next to me on the bed. _Brilliant deduction, Sherlock._ I mentally scowled at myself as I carefully wrapped my good arm around Babs and held her close and told my inner sarcasm to go take a hike (in not so many words and  not as nicely put)

I promptly forgot those thoughts when Babs laid her head on my shoulder and snuggled in, careful to avoid touching the still-healing wounds from where I was shot and the hand I cradled carefully on my lap. "Are you comfy?" she asked softly, and this time I heard only contentment in her voice.

"I am now," I replied softly, feeling like I had mile-wide grin on my face. _You know, I think I could get used to this,_ I thought to myself as I inhaled her scent. Vanilla. She smelled of vanilla.

I smiled even wider and held my girl close as I relaxed even further and allowed my eyes to close. Yep, I could definitely get used to this.

* * *

Like all good things in my life, however, it didn't last long.

I awoke with a start precisely one hour and fifty-two minutes later. (And yes, you can tell I'm bored when I check the internal clock right after I wake up.) The first thing I realized was that Babs was gone, and the slightly cool bedspread told me she'd been gone roughly thirty minutes. The second thing I did was open my eyes...and promptly shut them again with a mental groan and flinch.

_Please tell me I didn't just see Roy wearing pink._

I risked a quick peek and immediately groaned. _Damn, it is true. He's in pink. Someone save me._ Roy in pink was never good. Either we'd just had an invasion of the mutant two-year-olds determined to remake the world in their pinkinessness...ness and he'd already succumbed, or this was some new-fangled attempt to cheer me up. And if it was anything else, I was too sore and tired and stuck in this bed to care anything about it. _If I'm lucky, he didn't notice me wake up and I can go back to sleep before he does..._

"Hey, Dick! Wakey, wakey, rise and shine!"

Nope. No such luck.

Mentally cursing all the fates that had landed me here, I dragged my eyes open and mustered my best glare at Roy. "This better be good, Harper," I growled darkly, feeling more than a little testy. "I was _asleep_."

"Yep," he replied cheerfully, "that's right, you _were_ asleep. But it's late in the  morning, man. Time to be up already."

"Tell that to my body," I muttered darkly as I glared at the clock. Ten-past-nine, and that was supposed to be _late_ in the morning? As far as I was concerned, it was late in the  night and I'd already spent far too long awake.

"What was that, Dick?" he asked me cheerfully as he threw himself on the bed and bounced on it a little, which of course threw _me_ up into the air.

I bit back the words that sprang to my throat when my leg hit the mattress again. I thought I displayed rather admirable self-control when I didn't tell Roy what I really thought about where he could put himself. "Roy," I told him through gritted teeth, my hands clenching the bedspread as I struggled not to go for the jugular. "Get. Off. The. Bed. _Now._ Before I do something I _won't_ regret."

"Yeah, Roy," piped up a voice from beside me that could only be Tim, "better get off the bed before you get _that_ pink as well. Then Alfred will kill you too," he told the Titan, sounding inordinately matter-of-fact and happy about that prospect.

Great. _Now I've really been invaded. Give it a few seconds and the whole tribe will show up._ And of course I had to be right, didn't I?

"Kill?" interrupted Garth. "Alfred will kill him?" For all that he tried to sound alarmed, Garth also sounded very amused. _Double great. Now I've got Atlantean humor to contend with._

"Of course," Wally joined in with an answering grin. "Where do you think the Bat learnt his sunny disposition when it comes to dealing with mess-making Harpers?"

_Now they're all here. I'm doomed._

"Hey!" Roy protested as he finally shot of the bed and defended himself. "I object to that remark! You're the one that suggested the pink dye in Tower's alarm system!"

_Uh, Roy, what were you doing to set off the Tower's alarm system?_ And then a thought hit me. _And why would Wally put pink dye in **my** alarm system anyway?_ I groaned and flung my good arm over my eyes. _On second thought, don't tell me. I don't want to know._ Wasn't there a pillow somewhere I could hide under until they left?

"Bad night?" a warm female voice whispered from close-by as I felt a weight gently descend on the bed.

I gingerly brought the arm down and found myself focusing blearily on a concerned but smiling Donna. "I think it became a bad night when they walked in," I answered softly, shooting a glance over at where the three Titans were arguing/wrestling each other and Tim was providing the running commentary. _And I made those three into a team? God help me. I must've been high on something._

"Still not sleeping?" Donna inquired, turning her back on Wally giving Roy a nookie on his now-pink hair while Tim and Garth were conspiring off to the side in low tones.

Quickly returning my attention to Donna, I shook my head and sighed. "Two to three hours a night at the most." Maybe if I closed my eyes it wouldn't bother me what Tim was now helping Garth do to my team-mates. "I just can't get comfortable," I admitted quietly, rubbing my right hand over my eyes. Usual night-time procedure for me was falling asleep on my side, but right now I could only lay on my back without something hurting (too much), so of course I wasn't sleeping well.

"It'll pass," she told me quietly, rubbing a hand down my cheek. "Just give it time,"

I opened my eyes and shot her a lopsided smile, relaxing slightly into her touch. For as long as I've known her, she's always been a touching person – I was kinda surprised it had taken her this long to start. "I have," I replied, "and that's the problem. I haven't slept for longer than two hours straight since leaving the hospital. Eight days is a little long to wait, don't you think?" Somehow I didn't mind admitting that to Donna when I'd only managed the first part of asking for help with Leslie. Donna had always had the effect on me of getting me to spill my heart to her while thinking nothing of it, and I hoped she always would.

Donna shifted closer and put both hands on my temples and began to rub in large circles. "What do you think is causing it?"

I felt myself wilt under her expert hands, never realizing I was so tense until she started the massage. "Too much energy," I murmured, "and no way to burn it." I closed my eyes once more when I saw the three Titans pounce on Tim and start wrestling the kid to the ground – who of course, being a Bat-trained brat, gave each one of them as good as they gave him together. "Mmmm, ever thought of bottling your hands and selling them? I'll pay top dollar for the patent."

She let out a soft chuckle and I could hear her smile in her voice as she asked, "What about physical therapy?"

"It helps," I admitted tiredly, "but there's a limit. I can't do much walking like my leg needs without being able to hold a cane or use a set of crutches, and the chest wound and my ribs really restrict what exercises I can do."

"So you're lying there quietly going mad," she concluded for me as her hands dropped from my temples.

"Pretty much," I smiled lazily and opened my eyes again, making sure not to look over at the rest of my visitors. "Thanks Donna. I needed that. Are you sure I can't buy your hands from you?"

"I'm sure, I need them too much," she told me with a small grin of her own. "Now, I—"

She was interrupted from a crash from where the four boys had been holding their impromptu wrestling match. I winced and just knew I was feeling a headache coming back. _Don't look. Don't look. Don't try to see what they did. Whatever you do, don't look to the left._ I settled instead for fixing a stare at the ceiling and praying. Hard.

"—I think I'll take those _boys_ out of here," Donna finished with more than a hint of annoyance in her voice, and I could already imagine the look she'd be sending in their direction. _If looks could kill...or at least seriously maim..._

Then the door creaked open and, while it wasn't what I'd been praying for, it would certainly do. "I think that would be most...prudent," came a low growl that sounded like it came from Antartica or at least a couple of thousand miles beneath the ground – that's Bruce at his most charmingly annoyed.

And just like that, my four male visitors were out of here faster than a Flash on candy. Only Donna was slower, because she actually paused long enough to bid me well before leaving too.

I turned my head and looked at Bruce, still standing in the doorway. "You just loved doing that, didn't you?"

Alfred, of course, chose that moment to appear inside the room, despite the fact that Bruce was blocking the doorway. "Oh, good heavens!" he exclaimed, horrified at the mess on the floor. "Those rumbustious boys! I told them to be careful. That china vase was in the Wayne family for generations!" He bustled into the room, a dynamo of energy and action that was now focused on the china shards all over the carpeted floor. Just looking at him was making me tired again. _Rumbustious, huh? Remind me to throw that one at Roy some day._

Even silhouetted as he was by the light behind him, I swore I could see him smirk in response to the question he still hadn't answered. "How you doing?" he asked instead of replying, implicitly confirming what I'd suggested. Yep, he definitely loved the effect he had on a room.

I shrugged unevenly and relaxed back into the bed. "Okay, I guess," I answered truthfully, knowing better than to try and hide anything from Bruce right now, especially with Alfred in the room. "Tired more than anything."

"I'm sorry," he murmured as he came in and stood by the bed, looking down towards me but not at me and with his back to Alfred. "I should've come up earlier."

I shook my head and waved my hand dismissively. "Nah, don't worry about them. I was already tired."

"I'm sorry, Dick," he apologized again, his eyes slipping even more the side and away from me. "I knew I should've stopped them seeing you."

I shook my head again and sighed. _Here we go again._ Batman might be the World's Greatest Detective when he puts on the cowl and cape, but as Bruce he's the Biggest Guilt Magnet that there ever was. I swear, he finds every bit of it in two square miles all around him and takes it all on himself. I've lived with the guy too long not to see the signs. "Now don't _you_ get all guilty on me," I grumbled crossly.

That, at least, made him look at me. "I'm not 'getting all guilty,' Dick," he protested. Behind him, Alfred paused in his cleaning-up work and turned to face us, an unreadable expression on his face.

Ignoring Alfred for now, I snorted at Bruce's reply. "Sure you're not, Bruce." My tone told him exactly what I thought of _that_ one. "And don't you dare go off at the guys later, either," I glared. "They were just relieving some stress, that's all."

"Relieving stress, huh?" he answered noncommittally, eyebrow raised. I didn't need to be clairvoyant to know he didn't believe a word.

"Yeah," I told him helpfully while suppressing a cheeky grin. "Relieving stress. You know, thumping the living daylights out of something is a stress reducer." He opened his jaw, probably to tell me off, but I quickly added innocently, "Besides, you're not exactly one to talk since you do it all the time."

His jaw promptly closed again. _Gotcha there, didn't I?_ It was a struggle to hold back the answering smirk when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Alfred half-turn towards me and give me a small wink and half-smirk behind Bruce's back.

Bruce cleared his throat. "So, are you up to us doing your PT today?" he asked me in an obvious attempt to change the subject.

It worked.

_He's doing my PT?_ I couldn't help the small drop of my jaw before I quickly recovered. "I thought you had work to do, you know, WayneCorp and all that stuff."

Alfred paused for a moment in the last stages of cleaning up before starting again, but even as I ignored that I could tell he was half-listening in.

Bruce shrugged slightly, that small movement of his shoulders you usually have to squint to see. "So do you," he told me, and I sure hoped that by 'work' he meant the physical therapy and not the WayneCorp-mindnumbing work kind of work. "So, I'll ask again," he continued, his voice sounding strangely cheerful, "are you up to it?"

I sighed and rolled my eyes. "Well, I certainly ain't going anywhere else," I replied shortly as I used my good hand to throw back the covers.

Okay, so maybe it was a _tad_ unfair to take out my frustrations on Bruce, but he didn't have to sound like he _enjoyed_ the idea of putting me through the wringer so much either. I wondered idly who put him up to being my 'physical therapist,' because it certainly wasn't a job he'd pick for himself.

Hmm, it was probably an Alfred plan for a 'father-son-bonding' thing, judging by the small, satisfied smile I could see on our butler's face as he bustled out of the room, muttering the entire way about my friends. Unable to help myself, I felt myself grin slightly. Nope, I definitely did not want to be in their shoes right now.

Then the smile died as Bruce began skillfully massaging my thigh, using one of the techniques his Tibetan sensi had taught him. I let my eyes drift shut while I concentrated on not reacting whenever he drifted a little too close to the wound. Now that Alfred had left, the room was very quiet. Too quiet. "Say," I asked suddenly, "why isn't Tim back at school?"

"He wanted a week off while you initially recovered at the Manor," Bruce replied, a small smirk in his voice, "although he did...take a bit of 'convincing' not to take two weeks off."

I winced. Knowing Bruce, his 'convincing' was more like a threat to remove the Robin mantle if he didn't go back. But then, Tim's been hanging around me so much the last few days that I've practically needed a crowbar to pry him off me, so that was probably the only threat that worked.

"He's promised to visit every day after school, though," Bruce added as if an afterthought.

I nodded and opened my eyes enough to watch what he was doing to my leg. _Better make it now or never, Grayson._ It was the first time we'd been alone since I'd woken up in the hospital, and I knew that this kind of opportunity wouldn't come again in a hurry. Taking as deep a breath as I could, I asked tentatively, "Bruce?"

"Mmm?" he murmured, still concentrating on the massage.

"At the hospital," I started awkwardly, "when you were in my room...uh, near the end, before I, um, woke up..."

The methodical movements of his hands faltered for a moment, but soon resumed. "Yes?" he prompted, his tone shifting from distracted to almost involved, like he was hanging on my every word and trying not to show it...either that, or this was most difficult and important massage he'd ever given. Somehow, I kinda doubted it was the latter.

I tried my best not to sigh and shift my weight under the pressure of that attention. "I think I..." I stopped again and let loose a frustrated breath. _Damn, how hard can it be to ask one lousy question?_ "What were you talking to me about?" I quickly asked instead.

"Why?" he asked, obviously (to me, at least) uncomfortable with the question as his hands faltered once again.

"I don't...really remember much." I winced again. Okay, so now I was lying. I did remember quite a bit about lying unconscious in the hospital, a lot more than people thought I ever would or could. "Actually," I tried again, "I think can recall almost all the times when someone visited me."

"You were aware of us?" he questioned, surprise clear in his voice (at least to me) as he looked up and withdrew his hands from my leg, trying to seem casual about it as if he'd already planned to finish the massage right at that moment. We both knew better.

I nodded and looked down at my hands. "Yeah," I answered wearily, still feeling a measure of fatigue. "I knew you all were there, I just...didn't always catch the words, or have the energy to hear anything more than the voice. I heard more at the end, though, before...before I woke up." I rubbed one half of my face tiredly, wishing I'd gotten more sleep last night before I'd decided to tackle Bruce about my memories. _Just get it out, for heaven's sake Grayson. How bad can it be?_ But I knew the answer to that one: Very bad. "So why...um, why did ya call me a coward anyway?" I asked in a rush.

"..." _Uh oh._ That's the sound of Bruce knocked speechless.

My hand picked at the bedspread and I watched it go at it, determined not to look up. "Not that I remember a lot of what you said," I told him quickly, talking now to fill the silence between us, "I mean, I spent most of my time trying to—"

"Dick..."

"—to ignore the world. But I was waking up anyway and—"

"Dick."

"—that word just seemed to keep standing out, so I—"

" _Dick._ " The forceful tone made me stop, as did the hand he put on my chin to force to look up at him. "Dick," he gently began again. "You're rambling."

I mentally cursed as I felt myself the heat rush to my face. _Me and my damn nerves._ "Sorry," I mumbled as his hand dropped. Unease made me shift position a little, and I was more than a little relieved to find it didn't hurt so much to move the leg after the massage than it did two hours ago when I'd tried it with Babs in the room. Hopefully that meant the physical therapy wouldn't hurt so much today. _Yeah, and the chances of that are just about null and void._ I could live in hope, though.

Unknowingly breaking into my thoughts, Bruce asked me quietly, "Do you remember how I told you what the doctors wanted us to do?"

I nodded immediately. Of course I remembered. It's not often I'm told someone wanted to 'pull the plug' on me – figuratively, yeah, all the time, it was part of the whole vigilante gig, but _literally_... I certainly wasn't going to forget  that in a hurry.

"What I said, Dick," he explained carefully, almost as if he was thinking it through as he spoke – which I personally doubted, because Bruce always had a speech worked out for everything, "was me talking out my frustrations. What I actually said was, 'stop being such a damn coward and work with me.' I...I wanted you to get better so much I would've given my life to ensure it," he told me, his eyes shining with so much conviction that there was no way I'd disbelieve him. "If anyone was the coward," his voice dropping into a whisper, "it was me for not standing up to the doctors earlier."

He paused a moment before continuing, and when he did his tone had darkened. "That was why I almost left the room after that. I was going to tell the doctors exactly what I thought of their suggestion and where they could put it and how to fold it to fit." He looked away for a moment, and it just struck me how angry and frustrated he would've had to have been to intend making such a break from his Bruce-the-Fop persona. Hell, I knew how angry he was since I could still see it in his face even after the two and a bit weeks since.

Then came the next surprise.

Bruce turned back tome with a strange expression on his face I had no idea how to decipher and finished quietly, "But then you stopped me, son."

"I _stopped_ you?" I choked out, feeling surprised myself and more than a little shocked. The last time I'd truly stopped Bruce from doing something he'd decided on doing was...oh...maybe when I was fourteen? And that pushing it!

He nodded, a proud smile slipping slowly over his features. "Yes, son. You stopped me, Dick. You started to come back, just like I asked you to, and made it so I _couldn't_ leave you."

"Oh." I...I guessed that kinda counted as me stopping him, even if I didn't fully remember it. I suddenly smirked as a thought struck me. "I think, though, I would've liked to see you have a go at the doctors."

Bruce smirked back. "Me too. But I don't think they would want to see it." We shared a knowing grin. "Can't imagine why though," he added almost offhandedly with a trace of confusion, as if he couldn't understand why no one wanted to bear the brunt of his wrath.

"No, I can't imagine why either," I chuckled. "But I'm sure Tim or Roy could tell you if you ask them, though."

"So anyway," Bruce said abruptly, although I could tell his smirk remained even though he no longer displayed it, "are you ready to start getting back on your feet yet?"

Boy, was I ever. I shot him my best hundred-watt grin. "You just try holding me back."


End file.
